When commute gets pricier in Bengaluru

“Every form of commute other than the bus works out more costly for me when travelling inside the city. Metro has become too pricy,” says Vanitha A, an employee of a private firm.

She has to travel every day from Yeshwanthapura to Vasanthanagar. She must walk a kilometre to her work, even if she uses the metro trains to commute. Hiked fare has made the deal bitter for her. She has been using buses as much as possible, availing of the free service.

The hike in metro fare is only one face of the problem for many people. Those commuting short distances now sometimes use autos because the metro does not make sense. 

“Sometimes three of us have to travel 4 kms, but the fare becomes more than Rs 100 on the metro. An auto costs Rs 70-80 for the same distance, so we tend to use autos sometimes,” says Madhava B, another commuter.

But autos are not without problems. And they are set to become dearer as well. Behind this lies the demand for a better fare for autos by the drivers.

K Rudramurthy, President of the Auto Rickshaw Drivers Union of Bengaluru, explains why the fare must be hiked. “The cost of an auto was Rs 1.5 lakh five years ago, now it is more than Rs 3 lakh. Everything is now costlier. The cost of living for auto drivers is higher in Bengaluru. Even if you take up a rented accommodation outside the city, it is not less than Rs 7,000-8,000.”

A meeting between auto drivers and a committee evaluating auto fare fixation held on March 12 saw auto drivers asking for Rs 40 as the minimum price and Rs 20 for every extra kilometre. The last fare revision took place in November 2021. The fare is expected to be fixed after a meeting to be held on May 12.

Rudramurthy explains the fare disparity within Karnataka. “Shivamogga, Udupi and Mangaluru have already gone for Rs 40 minimum fare and Rs 20 for every additional kilometre. Tumkur still has a minimum fare of Rs 23 and Rs 13 per extra kilometre. This needs to be made uniform across the cities.”

Last-mile issues

Most auto drivers in Bengaluru already refuse to go by the metre fare, while all aggregator apps charge a minimum of Rs 40-50. This also has a boomerang effect on metro ridership, as many people depend on autos for last-mile connectivity to the metro. 

A 2022 study by the World Resource Institute, an organisation working on mobility issues, showed that 10 per cent of metro commuters used autos for metro connectivity. A whopping 66 per cent used non-motorised modes, such as walking or cycling. About 16 per cent used shared services.

The same survey came up with a demand-volume-based viability of different modes, evaluated on the basis of the per-kilometre fare. It showed the highest demand and financial viability for shared services like large and minibuses, self-driven two-wheelers and four-wheelers, and non-motorable transport.

Worldwide, shared rides and feeder buses are widely accepted solutions to last-mile connectivity issues. Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) tried its feeder services in some areas and has retained the successful ones. Many areas around different metro stations still struggle without connectivity, making the commute costlier and hurting Namma Metro’s ridership. 

BMTC and metro authorities have considered first-mile/last-mile shared auto/taxi solutions, but these haven’t scaled city-wide. A few pilot programmes and app-based pooling features (like Ola Share and Uber Pool) were tried in the past but discontinued due to regulatory pressure and poor driver/passenger acceptance.

Rudramurthy says that shared autos are illegal because of various rules, and hence, they do not operate inside the city. However, they do operate on the city’s outskirts where vigilance is absent or negligible.

Carpooling not legal yet

In Bengaluru, using private vehicles (white number plates) for commercial carpooling services is deemed illegal under the Karnataka Motor Vehicle Rules, 1989. This regulation prohibits private vehicles from being used for commercial purposes without appropriate permits. Consequently, app-based carpooling services like Quick Ride and BlaBla Car, which facilitate ride-sharing among unrelated individuals for a fee, have come under scrutiny.

The transport department has clarified that informal carpooling among colleagues or acquaintances is permissible, but any commercial operation involving private vehicles requires official authorisation.

The crackdown on unauthorised carpooling services followed complaints from taxi and auto-rickshaw associations, . The lack of a clear policy framework for app-based carpooling services continues to create legal ambiguities.

The illegality of shared smaller rides

Due to regulatory constraints, yellow board shared cabs inside the city are impossible today. The Motor Vehicles Act 1988 rules mandate stage carriage permission for vehicles that can offer shared rides. Such vehicles can charge separate fares for each passenger, pick up and drop off multiple passengers at different points, operate on fixed routes, and stop at predefined stages.

However, in Karnataka, a stage carriage is primarily a bus or a minibus, such as a metro feeder bus, for all practical purposes. By definition, “stage carriage” means a motor vehicle constructed or adapted to carry more than six passengers, excluding the driver, for hire or reward at separate fares paid by or for individual passengers, either for the whole journey or for stages of the journey. This automatically excludes regular yellow board cars and autos, which cannot host more than four people.

Because of all these reasons, unlike some other cities or countries, Karnataka does not have a well-defined regulatory framework or license category for ride-sharing in yellow board vehicles. Platforms cannot legally aggregate unrelated riders in one vehicle without a supporting policy. Some argue that this could also be a result of car rental lobbies.

Tanveer Pasha, president of Ola and Uber Drivers and Owners’ Association, argues that car pooling or shared rides in cars are impossible because of the nature of roads inside the city and the extra distance the cabs have to travel to pick up and drop each person — the monetary reward did not justify the trouble taken, as sometimes people would simply cancel the ride after the driver got there.

He also opposes future attempts to have such permissions and rides. “It is impractical to have such shared rides inside the city. There is a safety angle attached to such stage carriage licences. Private buses are given these licenses because the company remains responsible for safety, security, insurance etc. 

When asked why cars do not have metres here like in Mumbai, where a taxi is charged at Rs 31 per km, Pasha says it is upto the state transport department to come up with required rules and install metres in taxis. “Without metres, cars charge as much as they want in Bengaluru. Having metres officially would be good for commuters,” he says.

This is true in the aggregator apps as well. Sometimes cars cost way less than autos, defying all logic. During a peak hour on a recent rainy day, a ride from M G Road to Yeshwanthpur showed Rs 365-375 for an auto, while a non-AC car cost Rs 279.

“Affordable public transport is like the artery of a city. It helps people move and save as well, and it also helps the city’s economy. The government should increase mini buses and smaller shared vehicles to help people reach metro and bus stations, so that lakhs of people like me can breathe easy,” says Madhav.