Commute

A sea of vehicles struggles to move forward from Pallavaram signal to the Airport flyover on a Friday morning. Vehicles move inch by inch, literally, taking more than twenty minutes to cover a kilometre. In a rush to reach their destinations on time, two-wheeler riders take the easy route -- they simply take over the pedestrian space, while four-wheelers often jump red signals. In all this chaos, there's little room for even ambulances to find a clear corridor. In short, Grand Southern Trunk (GST Road), the spacious two-lane highway that connects the suburbs such as Tambaram and Pallavaram to the…

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has made FASTag mandatory for all vehicles that currently pay toll, starting December 1, 2019. The nation-wide introduction of FASTag is part of the National Electronic Toll Collection Programme which aims to achieve cashless toll collection, fast movement of vehicles across toll plazas and reduction in congestion. The rollout of FASTags will be limited to National Highways  and select state highways in the initial stage with all state highways expected to follow suit by March 2020. What is FASTag and how will it work? FASTag is a rechargeable prepaid vehicle tag that is…

Last Friday, Bengaluru City Police Commissioner Bhaskar Rao issued a notification barring private vehicles on the bus priority lane (BPL) in Outer Ring Road. The BPL - between Silk Board to KR Puram and then towards Baiyappanahalli - will benefit around a lakh Bengalureans commuting in over 800 buses everyday, says the BMTC. Authorities presume that the BPL will increase the speed and efficiency of BMTC buses, encouraging more people to use buses, and thereby will reduce traffic in the ORR. But there's been a major concern since the inception of the project - how can Bengaluru's unruly motorists be…

The adage, ‘Catch them young,’ is associated with imbibing children with values. This dictum holds good when it comes to educating school children on road safety and making them change agents for safety and influencing the larger citizenry. A step in this direction was taken through the establishment of the first School Safety Zone at St. Joseph’s School (CBSE), Bengaluru.  The School Safety Zone is a result of 3Ms’ initiative Young Change Agents for Road Safety (YCARS) in partnership with Concern for Road and Pedestrian Safety (CoRPS) and United Way of Bengaluru. The initiative was launched on 19th November in…

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, I looked at the strategic issues and practical issues respectively, in implementing the bus priority lane (BPL) project in Outer Ring Road. In this concluding part of the series, I discuss solutions to these problems: Ban slow-moving vehicles in ORR If a slow-moving vehicle is allowed on the general lanes of ORR, the entire traffic will slow down painfully. Hence BBMP must ban the entry of all slow-moving vehicles in the corridor. This includes hand-pushed carts, pedal-rickshaws and animal-driven vehicles. Do not allow BPL to cross the path of private vehicles…

Bengaluru's bus priority lane (BPL) project was to be launched in Outer Ring Road (ORR) today, but has been postponed yet again. In the first part of this series, I explored issues with respect to the overall strategy of the project. What's also clear is that the BBMP and BMTC have not thought through many practical difficulties in implementing it. Here are some of those: BPL is actually Bus 'BMTC Priority Lane'! Presently the BPL is only for BMTC, and not for other forms of mass transport such as: State transport buses from all states Private intercity (long-distance) buses  Private buses…

Tomorrow, BMTC’s bus priority lane (BPL) will be fully operational on a 27-km stretch of Outer Ring Road (ORR), from Swami Vivekananda Road to Silk Board. The project was to be launched on November 1st, but was postponed to 15th, as BBMP was unable to complete the infrastructure work due to rains. There is much optimism about the project, but it has strategic and planning issues that should have been addressed beforehand. In the first part of this series, I look at the strategic problems around BPL. BPL is not contextualised in terms of the city’s transport needs The project…

Public transport in Bengaluru has deteriorated rapidly. Though the government declares magic bullet schemes such as elevated corridors and bus priority lanes, these pop out of thin air without any city-wide planning for transportation. Rather than jumping to ad-hoc solutions, we should first be clear about the problem. At the core of this is how we measure the performance of our transportation. If any public transport agency wants to win over the public as its customers, it will have to consider the following Key Success Factors (KSFs) for mobility, and find optimum solutions. End-to-end connectivity Pickup within 300 m of…

It all started with a nine-kilometre ride three years ago. Soon cycling enthusiast Felix John started pedalling long distances, with his recent record being a 1200-km ride to Coimbatore. And now, he is Chennai’s Bicycle Mayor, appointed by BYCS – an Amsterdam-based social enterprise. His responsibilities as a bicycle mayor are many and diverse: to increase cycling in the city and to bridge the gap between cyclists and local government, among several others. In an interview with Citizen Matters, Felix John, who takes pride in hailing from North Chennai, talks about the ambitions, feasibility and challenges of promoting cycling in…

Many stakeholders have been involved in the introduction of bus priority lanes in Bengaluru - BMTC, BBMP, DULT, Bengaluru City Police, among others. The project also put the advantages of public transport at the centre of public discourse once again. However, an important aspect that plays on our mind about public transport is our personal safety. Women especially, are always at the bottom of the ladder when it comes to safety. We sat down for a chat with Bhaskar Rao, Commissioner of Police, Bengaluru city, on measures to improve safety in public transport. In his candid style, Rao spoke at…