public transport

What is common among urban waterways, economics and culture? All three are intertwined, and can complement as well as transform each other. But they can also lead to weakening urban systems if they are poorly planned, as the Indian port city of Kochi has shown. However, the city has seen recent attempts at overall upgrading of systems and researchers from the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) emphasise the role that the city’s waterways can play in this makeover effort. Kochi’s crisscrossing canals and rivers linked to a backwater system can significantly impact its socio-economic and cultural…

In Part 1 of this series, Citizen Matters had talked about carpooling startups in various cities and how people are availing these facilities. Despite the emergence of a number of players in the field, however, there are various challenges that these companies are grappling with. The biggest challenge carpooling entrepreneurs face is that the concept itself is not yet so popular in India. Concerns about privacy and security are common, so is the general feeling of discomfort in travelling in a stranger’s car. Hence a large part of these entrepreneur’s efforts are invested in popularising the concept and getting the support of…

Given the current scenario of increasing pollution in Indian cities, it’s quite likely that we shall soon have to breathe from canisters of clean air to avoid chronic respiratory issues. What we’ve been noticing in Delhi is clearly a man-made catastrophe. PM 2.5 levels are at an all-time high and almost 10 times those seen in Beijing. Citizens are seriously considering options to escape the toxic and unacceptably high levels of air pollution in Delhi. But as things stand, not everyone is lucky enough to be able to do so, the burden falling disproportionately on the poor. What is most…

If recent news reports are to be believed, the Bangalore Metro is set to have coaches for women soon, according to Minister for Bengaluru Development and Town Planning K J George. The facility is expected to be implemented in 2019, when the total number of coaches will be increased from three to six. The demand for reservation had come from a section of women passengers, once the Purple Line (Mysore Road to Byappanahalli) became operational and ridership multiplied. BMRCL currently estimates that 40% of their nearly three lakh daily passengers are women, and plans to hold a survey to find…

This is a story that has passion, action, drama, blood (well, not blood really, but it seems like people are baying for our blood), sweat and tears! Sounds like a Bollywood potboiler? Well, that’s the Durga alarm story for you. It is nothing short of a potboiler, with multitudes of characters, plots, sub-plots and plenty of action. The humble beginnings of the Durga alarm The story quite literally started in 2014, when the first thoughts took shape and it developed, slowly and painstakingly over unlimited cups of tea and brain-storming sessions. Almost 90% of the women who attended our workshops…

On the fourth of every month I need to commute from north to south Bengaluru, to unlock my gate for the BESCOM meter reader and collect my monthly bill. The fourth of each month also happens to be designated as bus day by BMTC to encourage citizens to take to public transport to ease traffic snarls on our jam-packed roads. Although I know the rationale underlying the bus day initiative, this is why we commuters abhor bus rides. 1) We waste time, lots of it, and today time is precious. Just covering 14 km, from Sanjaynagar in the north to…

Half the city of Bengaluru travels using 6,500 buses. The other half uses 55 lakh vehicles. This data points so obviously to what we should be doing, but unfortunately, we insist on spending enormous amounts of money supporting private transport, and less than one-tenth of it supporting public transport and sustainable options. The illogic of financing urban mobility is that it is easy to get 30,000 crores for a full Metro system, or 1,000 crores each year endlessly for road-building, but we struggle to get 50 crores a year for footpaths and refuse to spend 200 crores for a Bus…

Reshmi Nagendra writes: Last evening when I was returning with 2 of my friends in my car, I had one of the worst encounters with a BMTC bus driver and the conductor of that bus(K A 0 1 F A 923, route number 213 L). The bus driver overtook us from the left side so recklessly and that left scratches in the front of the car, near the headlight. When I stopped and questioned him regarding the way he spoke , the driver straightway started addressing me in singular and used fowl language. Since I am also a localite I…

I saw this "repair" of a broken window on a Vajra (Volvo) bus.   Jugaad, or creative solutions, are all very well, but does BMTC really not have money to repair a bus properly, and have to resort to ugly solutions lik this?

In spite of my writing to BMTC several times on this topic, I have never received a response, nor has anything been done.  It was a rainy evening, I came out of Goethe Institut, Indira Nagar, wanting to take a bus home. I knew my route number - 201. But, where was the bus stop? In the rain and the dark, I could hardly see the route numbers on the buses that passed (it didn't help that the route numbers were not illuminated in most buses.) There were several stops, but not one had any bus routes on them. I…