BEST – Page 15 – BESTpedia

The Underrated Daily Pass

Daily Passes are something that drives every Transco today. It is not only beneficial for the transport body, but also for the commuter. A Daily Pass allows a commuter to travel unlimited for the day it has been issued at a nominal cost. In the long run, it is very useful. Some cities, like Bombay, and Bangalore, have special Daily passes for regular buses and AC buses. Now, there is a lot more to Daily Passes than what is visible on the pass itself.

The biggest headache for a transco is the resale/reuse of passes. To prevent this, several of them implemented select measures. Now, let us have a look at some of these measures.

PMPML

PMPML has had Daily passes right from the PMT-PCMT era. Even back then, it had mandated a PMT/PCMT issued Identity Card for the Daily Pass. With the subsequent merger of the PMT and PCMT into the PMPML, the PMPML started issuing the ID cards and Daily Passes. The old PMT era Daily Pass is today used as a PMPML Weekly Pass with the start and end dates punched out.

The PMPML Daily Pass, is a Pink or Off-white coloured ticket, with space for the date, month and last three digits of the ID card printed on it. This is valid on all buses including the Rainbow BRTS, Katraj-Swargate-Hadapsar BRT Volvo buses, but are not valid on the AC Pune Darshan and CityAir Airport connectivity buses. The pass is valid on the entire operational region of PMPML, outside the municipal limits of both Municipal Corporations. To prevent its resale, the ID card number is punched out. The pass cannot be used on the same date a year later because the ID card would no longer be valid by then.

MTC and TNSTC

An MTC Daily Pass in Chennai. Image copyright Srikanth Ramakrishnan, CC-BY-SA 4.0 International, available on the Wikimedia Commons.

MTC and TNSTC have both had Daily passes in large cities including Chennai and Coimbatore for a long time. In Coimbatore, these passes require a local ID proof in order to be purchased and are valid only if the holder shows the ID card as well. In Chennai, known as the Travel As You Please ticket, they require an MTC ID card for Weekly/Monthly passes which costs ₹5 [according to the website, while I paid ₹20 for it]. The pass costs ₹50 per day and is not valid for night services. There is no Daily/Weekly/Monthly Pass for Volvo buses, which is surprising.

BMTC and KSRTC

A BMTC Gold Day Pass. Image copyright Srikanth Ramakrishnan, CC-BY-SA 4.0 International, available on the Wikimedia Commons.

BMTC is undoubtedly the leader when it comes to Daily Passes. It has a wide variety of Daily Passes, something like their wide variety of buses as well. They currently have three major daily passes for people who do not have any other pass. This includes a regular daily pass for non-AC services that comes in two forms: One for those who own a BMTC ID Card, and one that costs ₹5 more for those who don’t have a BMTC pass. Those who purchase the former have to write their ID number on the pass, and all passholders have to sign the pass. The Vajra Gold Day Pass costs twice, and is valid on all buses except the Daily Rounds, and Vayu Vajra buses. A pass that is priced between the two exists for AC-Suvarna/Tata Marcopolo AC buses. ID Cards are of two types: One is the Loyalty Card that costs ₹25 for a year and is valid ONLY with the non AC Daily Pass, while the ₹100 ID Card is mandatory for a Monthly Pass as well. Today, BMTC conductors only sell the Gold Day Pass if the commuter has a valid Government issued ID or BMTC ID. Due to high sale volumes, BMTC changes its pass everyday. Each day of the week has a different, colour-coded pass with the day of the week written in Kannada/English and the serial number of the pass starting with a different series for different days of the week. BMTC also has a Saral and Sarag pass that it issues with the BMRCL. Saral is a Gold Daily Pass that allows unlimited travel on the Namma Metro, while Sarag is the same for non-AC services. All Daily Passes are valid throughout the operational area of BMTC. In 2009, BMTC and KSRTC had jointly released a ₹70 rupee pass that was valid on all non-AC BMTC as well as non-AC KSRTC Karnataka Sarige busees in the nearby districts. The AC pass now costs ₹150 including a 6% Luxury Tax introduced by the Central Government.

KSRTC MCTD's Daily Bus Pass for Volvo buses. — KSRTC MCTD’s Daily Bus Pass for Volvo buses. Image copyright Srikanth Ramakrishnan, CC-BY-SA 4.0 International, available on the Wikimedia Commons.

KSRTC in the Mysore City Transport Department has a similar arrangement. It has two passes, one for AC buses that costs ₹96 [with the Service Tax] and one for non AC buses that costs ₹50. The pass is valid throughout the service region of the MCTD and is valid on all MCTD buses. Compared the Bangalore, both the pass rates as well as the fares are low.

TSRTC

The Telangana State Road Transport Corporation has a Daily Pass System in Hyderabad, referred to as the Travel As You Like [TAYL] Ticket. It is printed using the ETM. It is of two variants, one priced at ₹70 for non-AC, regular, and Metro Express buses and the ₹150 pass which is valid on Sheetal and Metro Deluxe Volvo buses. The pass now costs ₹160 after a 6% Luxury Tax introduced by the Central Government. The conductor asks for the passengers age and mobile number, both of which are printed on the ticket. The passenger is required to write their name as well as sign the pass. The pass is valid in the Twin city regions of Hyderabad and Secunderabad.

In June 2016, TSRTC announced that Daily Passes would be valid 24 hours from the time of issue. Later on, they announced that the passes could be purchased upto 7 days in advance.

BEST

The story with BEST is a different one altogether, atleast today. A few years ago, BEST had daily passes similar to the current PMPML passes except there was no ID card. There were two types of Daily Passes, the Regular and Limited Pass for ₹25, which as the name suggests was valid on regular and Limited Routes, and the Corridor Pass at ₹40 which was valid on Express and Corridor services. The pass was punched with the date and gender, and to prevent misuse, the conductor would scribble a description of purchaser on the back. However, later on BEST began insisting on ID proof and asked commuters to write the ID number on the back of the pass. All this changed when BEST went digital in 2011-2012.

Once BEST went digital, they made it mandatory for commuters to have an RFID card for ALL passes. A horizontal ID card was issued for monthly and quarterly passes while a vertical one was issued for prepaid cards. Both can be used for Daily Passes. Till February 2015, BEST charged ₹50 for a non-AC Daily Pass and ₹150 for an AC pass. These passes are also referred to a Magic Daily Pass [AC and non-AC]. After February, BEST increased the rates to ₹70 and ₹200 respectively. All Daily Passes are valid throughout the operational area of BEST including Navi Mumbai, Thane, and Mira-Bhayander.

However, in September 2015, the BEST decided to introduce a new change in the non AC Magic Pass. As per the new system, the BEST now has three kinds of non-AC passes:

The regular ₹70 Magic non-AC pass that is valid throughout BESTs operational limits including Navi Mumbai, Mira Bhayander and Thane.
The ₹50 Suburban pass that is valid in the Suburban limits, and upto Mahim/Sion/Rani Laxmi Chowk in the South and Dahisar/Mulund Check Naka in the North.
The ₹40 City pass that is valid in the Island city region, again upto Mahim/Sion/Rani Laxmi Chowk.

No daily pass on Sundays or Public Holidays requires an ID card. Anyone can buy a pass. Since it isn’t tied to an ID card any longer, it needs to be carefully preserved throughout the day, and the conductor must enter the right gender. Of course, if you give your ID card, it logs it onto your ID card, and automatically detects your gender and the conductor can still validate the card with the ETM.

The Magic AC pass remains the same, however, on Sundays, half the AC buses are cancelled, thus making the Magic AC pass pointless. I personally feel BEST should either charge less for the AC pass on Sundays or go the BMTC way and charge extra for non ID passes on all days. Any pass can be purchased on any bus because they are all digitally printed.

Also Read: A Trip Down Memory Lane: Pictures of BEST’s Punched Daily Passes

MSRTC

MSRTC has a 4 day, 7 day, Monthly, quarterly and annual pass called the Travel Wherever you Like Pass. They have been in operation since 1988. The current form of the pass is similar to BEST’s Daily Pass system. Users are required to have a Smart Card for it.

For pricing, two seasons have been created:

Congested Season: 15 October to 14 June.
Non Congested Season: 15 June to 14 October.

Pass rates vary per season. The cost of the passes is mentioned on the MSRTC website.

DTC

A DTC AC Green Card. Image copyright Srikanth Ramakrishnan, CC-BY-SA 4.0 International, available on the Wikimedia Commons.

This is probably the first time I’m mentioning DTC on BESTpedia, but being one of the transcos catering to a large city in India, I guess this needs to be mentioned.

The DTC refers to its Daily Pass as a Green Card. The DTC Green Card is neither green, nor is it a card. There are two variants. ₹40 for non-AC and ₹50 for AC. Yes, you read that right. The Delhi AC Daily Pass is cheaper than Bangalore, Pune or Mumbai’s non-AC pass of ₹70! But then, it is hardly surprising, given that Delhi has been spoilt by subsidies solely by being the Capital of India. The Green Card is available with the conductor of the bus and a non-AC bus conductor sells both types. It looks like a regular ticket, and the conductor writes the commuters name and age on it, while marking the date and month. That’s it. No other measure to prevent resale. The downside to this is:

Very few AC buses compared to regular ones.
Due to it being so cheap, AC buses are as crowded as their non-AC counterparts.
Neither pass is valid on the Orange-coloured Cluster services, which form roughly 1/3rd of the buses.
This pass is ONLY valid within Delhi borders, and not in the rest of the NCR.

CTU

Another first on BESTpedia, this is the first time I’m mentioning the Chandigarh Transport Undertaking. The CTU, under the UT administration operates buses throughout the Tricity region comprising of Chandigarh, Panchkula and Mohali.

The CTU has two kinds of Daily Passes: A green coloured one for non-AC services that costs ₹30 and a pink coloured one for AC services, priced at ₹40.

Both passes are valid throughout the Municipal Limits of the Tricity Region comprising of Chandigarh, Mohali, Panchkula, Zirakpur, Saketari, Manasdevi, and Mullanpur. For routes that go beyond the Municipal borders, such as to Landran, the pass is valid only till Sohana, where the Municipal Corporation’s jurisdiction ends.

Similar to the DTC Green Card, only the Passenger’s name is written on the ticket. The date is both written, as well as punched by the conductor. Passes are available aboard a bus, or at the ISBTs.

So at the end of the day, we can conclude that BMTC is the undisputed leader of Daily Passes. BEST, lags a bit behind, but is great with technology. PMPML, is with BEST. DTC, on the other hand is a totally different ball game. While people may not realise it, Daily Passes are very crucial, for both the commuter as well as the transco. It is useful for tourists and business people.

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Conductor-less buses: A boon or a bane?

Back in July 2015, BEST had announced that it had plans to operate buses without conductors in South Bombay on an experimental basis. The first thing that came to my mind was the BMTC Pushpak fleet. Thankfully, BEST was not emulating BMTC, but emulating its younger Maharashtrian sibling MSRTC, which has so far been super successful in the field of operating buses without conductors.

So what exactly is the difference? To the layman, a bus without a conductor, is a bus without a conductor. There is a major difference between the two, one that spells the difference between efficiency and incompetence. Let us examine the difference between the two and examine the flaws of each:

The BMTC Model

The most prominent of the BMTC no-conductor buses is the Pushpak. Originally a brown-coloured, single-door bus, with a variant of it, called the Pushpak+ with a green livery and an additional centre-door seen these days, they are seen on a lot of routes across Bangalore. A lot of them are also leased out by BMTC to IT giants and others. Another peculiar feature of these buses is that they do not feature the regular 2+2 pattern of seating normally followed in city buses, but have 3 seats per row, on the right hand side, behind the driver. The driver of this bus collects the fare, hands over change (if any), issues the ticket, and if he doesn’t have change, he writes it on the back of the ticket. Thankfully, unlike their BEST counterparts [no pun intended], BMTC conductors just tear the ticket halfway and hand them over. But imagine, doing this for each passenger! As if this was not bad enough, due to the seating pattern in the bus, the walkway width is reduced, and only one passenger can walk across. With only one door, you can imagine what could possibly happen when you reach a bus stop. People have to board, people have to disembark, people have to buy tickets, or passes, show their passes. The driver is overburdened with all this, and has an additional headache- He still has to drive the bus! The time taken at each bus stop becomes a huge figure, resulting in longer commute time and lesser fuel efficiency. Add Bangalore’s narrow roads, badly located bus stops, bumper-to-bumper traffic to this and wallah, you have the perfect recipe for a Traffic Jam! The only possible positive outcome of this mess is that BMTC doesn’t have a conductor on this bus, which would probably save them some cash.

A similar model existed back in 2008-9, where green-coloured buses labelled “Pass Bus” would ply. These buses were also single-door, devoid of a conductor, but had one interesting feature- No tickets (or passes) were sold. Only pass holders, be it daily, weekly, monthly, students, senior citizens were allowed. BMTC later on started selling daily passes on these buses, adding to the drivers burden. They were later given a rear door, a conductor and painted in the blue-off white colour scheme and became regular buses. BMTC probably realised that there was no point in running services that didn’t generate any revenue while on a trip.

The MSRTC Model

This model started off a decade ago with the Shivneri series. Originally only on the Dadar East – Pune Railway Station route, it has since been extended 113 other routes as well as the Hirkani/Asiad and Parivartan buses. In this model, MSRTC has bus booths at several places, like Khodadad Circle in Dadar, where the Bus Terminus is the lane under the flyover, between its pillars, or Maitri Park in Chembur, Wakad in Pimpri-Chinchwad, or Nigdi on the Old Mumbai-Pune Highway. A conductor sits at these booths, with a Trimax electronic ticket machine. When the bus arrives, he or she punches in the bus number onto the ETM, which automatically brings up the departure time onto the ETM, as well as seats left. To prevent error, they also check the trip sheet with the driver, and after selling tickets, log it onto the sheet so that the next conductor, if there is any other stop en route, can cross-check with it. This model existed even in the time of the Punched Paper ticket. The buses here are the same as the buses with conductors in them. For instance, the Swargate – Borivali Shivneri has a conductor due to number of stops it has on the Western Express Highway. MSRTC benefits here mainly because of the fact that buses run faster due to fewer stops, and it has to employ fewer conductors. Of course, conductors themselves are not too enthused by the move. In the long run, this impacts the organisational health of ST in a positive way, which is good for both commuters and staff.

Now, coming to BEST

BEST intends to run these buses on four routes:

Special 1 – CST <-> NCPA
Special 2 – CST <-> World Trade Centre
Special 8 – Churchgate <-> Churchgate via World Trade Centre
Special 9 – Churchgate <-> Churchgate via Nariman Point

These buses will operate on the MSRTC model, with conductors at the bus stops, especially given that these are short routes. Now, my main concern here is that if there are 10 stops, will BEST have a conductor at each of the ten stops? Also, more importantly, will it provide seating and shelter arrangements to the conductors? You can’t expect them to stand for hours with the heat, pollution and traffic. One may argue that here, the BMTC model would be better as conductors wouldn’t be waiting on busy roads, but do remember, making the driver do all the work isn’t such a good idea altogether.

Now, the funny part is that BEST says that it has sent a proposal to the Government of Maharashtra to allow buses without conductors as this is prohibited under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988. Now, the MVA is a pan-India law, and thus, if it is illegal in Maharashtra, for a Stage Carrier/Stage Coach to operate without a driver, then has BMTC been violating the law jeopardising the lives of commuters all this time? However, the interesting point is that as per the Motor Vehicles Act of 1988, there two clauses which are interesting:

The first, which allows the driver to temporarily take charge as conductor:

the conditions subject to which drivers of stage carriages performing the functions of a conductor and persons temporarily employed to act as conductors may be exempted from the provisions of sub-section (1) of section 29;

and the second, which implies that a conductor is not needed:

Duty of the driver to take certain precautions at unguarded railway level crossing. Every driver of a motor vehicle at the approach of any unguarded railway level crossing shall cause the vehicle to stop and the driver of the vehicle shall cause the conductor or cleaner or attendant or any other person in the vehicle to walk up to the level crossing and ensure that no train or trolley is approaching from either side and then pilot the motor vehicle across such level crossing, and where no conductor or cleaner or attendant or any other person is available in the vehicle, the driver of the vehicle shall get down from the vehicle himself to ensure that no train or trolley is approaching from either side before the railway track is crossed.

Confusing, isn’t it? If indeed, buses without conductors weren’t permitted, then BEST should be sending a proposal to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways [Morth], Government of India and this ideally shouldn’t be a problem, since the Minister is Nitin Gadkari. At the same time, this would also imply that BMTC is violating the law by plying buses without a conductor, even if Karnataka has a law since Central Law usually overrides State Law if they are in conflict. I’m hoping for a lawyer to clarify on this below.

So now, the pros and cons:

Pros:

Money saved by employing fewer conductors.
Time Saved because you have to have fewer stops.

Cons:

You need to reduce the number of stops.
You need to make special arrangements for the conductor while waiting for the bus to arrive.

This model will definitely work with BEST because there is no reservation or booking of seats involved and because, well, the Trimax ETMs.

Bums on the Saddle

Since time immemorial, cycles have been a very important mode of transport. They are used for various purposes, from acting as a “business hub” in terms of acting as a point-of-sale for tea vendors to the main business vehicle in rural areas. They are used as the main transport vehicle by many, especially in rural and semi-urban areas. In urban and metropolitan areas, they are viewed as a lower class mode of transport.

Cycles acting as a Business Hub. A vegetable Vendor in Sathyamangalam, TN, uses his cycle as his shop. Image copyright Srikanth Ramakrishnan, CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported, available on the Wikimedia Commons.

In the recent past, several cities in India have tried to popularise cycling in several ways. Among them are Pune, Bangalore and Ahmedabad. While some have succeeded and some have failed, it is worth relooking at cycling for the various benefits it offers.

Pune got cycle lanes around 2008 while the city got a massive overhaul for the Commonwealth Youth Games, under the JnNURM pattern. A few cycle tracks were laid in and around Kothrud and Shivajinagar, while majority of the cycle lanes were laid from Katraj to Swargate to Hadapsar alongside the first BRTS line. These cycle lanes are usable, but they are usually blocked by traffic, pedestrians, or sometimes, hawkers and homeless people.

Bangalore got cycle lanes in 2012. These lanes are prominent in and around Jayanagar, especially under the Metro. These lanes were basically just a section of the road marked with a solid white line with the image of a cycle painted on it, thus not having a physical barrier separating it from regular traffic like the ones in Pune. The net result, they turned into parking spaces for cars.

Mysore too got cycle lanes, but unlike Bangalore, they were physically separated from motorised traffic.

However, a year prior, in 2011, prior to the opening of the first Reach of Namma Metro, Bangalore also got a Public Shared Cycle system, jointly operated by the BMRCL and BBMP. The system was operated by Kerberon Automations under the brand name Atcag. Each cycle was tracked by GPS and required users to pay a one time registration of ₹1000 for a smart card and then use the card as a prepaid card while using the cycles. The first hour was free, after which a nominal rate would be charged. There were 9 cycle stations in the city.

Ahmedabad got a similar system named MyByk, operated by Greenpedia, with cycle stations across several Janmarg stations.

Now, the success of the public share and ride system is entirely debatable, mainly due to the subscription based nature of the service. The system followed in IT parks like Infosys, or college campuses like the IITs, where a cycle is picked up from the stand and left in another is impractical in public because cycles will get damaged or stolen because the rider is not being held accountable for their actions. Thus, the system of charging users and tracking the cycles, both with GPS and tying it to a user is a necessity.

Now, the main section. How do we implement an effective cycling plan across major cities. For this purpose, I plan to use the Pune Metropolitan Region of Pimpri-Chinchwad and Pune, as well as a part of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region consisting of Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Thane.

Creating cycle tracks and lanes is one thing, but making it safer for cyclists is more important. Cyclists are on par with Pedestrians. Both are treated badly and often traffic doesn’t bother stopping for them, even with the appropriate traffic signals showing.

Our first target, the PMR.

The Pune Metropolitan region offers immense potential for cycling as a mode of public transport. This, coupled with the fact that Pune has been the undisputed Cycling Capital of India for a long time makes one wonder why the government has not done much to promote cycling. For starters, all the BRTS corridors, from Nagar Road, Nashik Road, Aundh-Ravet Road, Vishrantwadi Road, et al must be given proper cycle lanes. Once this is done, cycle parking must be provided. This can be easily achieved at major bus terminals such as Kiwale and Vishrantwadi, but needs to be given a serious thought at other areas. It can be done with relative ease at Kalewadi Phata and Dange Chowk, both of which have a split flyover, providing the much needed space for the parking. Similarly, parking must be offered at major PMPML bus stations, such as Kothrud, Balewadi, Nigdi, Chinchwad, Corporation, Pune Railway Station, Swargate, Hadapsar, etc, as well as Railway stations like Shivajinagar, Kasarwadi, Akurdi etc. Along with this, last mile connectivity should be provided for those using shared cycles. Docking stations must be provided in residential pockets to encourage their use.

And now, for the MMR.

The situation in the MMR is pretty similar to the PMR. Cycle stations can be provided at all of BESTs Depots, Bus Stations, major junctions such as Rani Laxmi Chowk, Khodadad Circle, Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Chowk, NSCI Worli, as well as under the various rail-based stations. Cycle stations can be built around the Railway stations as part of SATIS, or under Metro and Monorail stations on the Median with an additional staircase of elevator for cyclists to use. In Thane, Navi Mumbai, it can be implemented along several select areas near Hiranandani along Ghodbunder Road, and at all CIDCO railway stations. It would be a massive boon to have it at CBD Belapur Railway station given the connectivity it will soon receive. A cycle station can be set up under the CBD Belapur flyover as well. Similarly, stations must be built at all present and upcoming Jetties, Ferry Wharf, Gorai Jetty, Belapur Hoverport, etc. Other major areas where they can come up are at SEEPZ in Andheri, Powai, etc.

Bangalore and Chennai

Both these cities should seriously consider providing cycle stations at bus stations, railway stations and Metro stations. This might help fulfill the BMTC Park and Ride Concept.

Now, for the bigger problem. The Cycle Stations themselves. How should they be built and operated:

Ideally, each ‘Cycle Station’, should consist of two parts: One for the public cycles, and for people riding their own.

The former is not a problem, since each user requires a Smart Card. Thus, authentication and security are sorted as both are connected to the card.

The latter, however might turn out to be a bit of a problem. Unlike a regular Pay-and-Park system, Cycles need a little more. Stealing a car, or a motorised two wheeler, is not too easy, whereas here, it is as easy as lifting a box off the ground and then pushing it out. So how do we solve this problem? Simple, we provide a locking mechanism on the cycle stand. But how would you make it work? There are two methods I see for this:

The Old Fashioned Way: Hire a guard or attendant. He gives you a receipt for the parking charge, you park it in the stand, lock it with your own lock and go. You can have a pass system for this. For those who don’t have a lock, provide one against payment of a refundable deposit. Say your parking charge is ₹20 for a day, you charge ₹50 for a chain and lock, upon whose return, you get your money back. You can have a daily-weekly-monthly pass system for this as well. It’s a win-win situation. Print the cyclists photo and a photo of the cycle, specify the date and time details for the pass on a sheet of paper. Just cross the date if it is a daily pass being sold by the vendor. It is as simple as a conductor selling a ticket. But do we really want to go down this path? Especially with Digitisation and eGovernance coming up?
The High-Tech Way: Install cameras for security, but yes, do hire a guard. Every user needs to have a smart card, for single transactions, they can get a token or a single use paper RFID token. The user comes in, locks the cycle with a lock built-into the stand, swipes their card on the sensor and leaves. The money for the parking is deducted from the account balance of the card. For the ones who don’t have a card; keep a machine like the Automatic Ticket Machines at Metro Stations. User slots in the time they intend to park for, insert the money, collect the RFID token or printed ticket, lock their cycle and go. On return, they return/slot-in/swipe the card or token and take their cycles out. This can be a good starter with the BEST prepaid card as the Smart Card.

There is a lot of thinking, planning, redrawing, mapping, innovating to be done to implement this. This will potentially improve and increase the number of cyclists on the roads, which might help reduce traffic jams. We all know how healthy and enjoyable cycling really is. Let us share the joy with those who may not know.

Do post your feedback in the comments below:

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NMMT Limited: Will it succeed?

NMMT Limited; after my previous post on BEST, seems to be an interesting development. Note I am only calling it NMMT Limited; the word Limited is just a figment of my imagination.

Back in 2014, NMMT had a meeting with several IT service providers, including Trimax, ARS, and Atos to set up an Intelligent Transport System [ITS], which would have brought NMMT more or less along the lines of BEST. However, nothing of the sort has taken place so far. I still see NMMT issuing punched tickets, they have no Bus tracking mechanisms like BEST, and their buses are mostly rickety. However, a recent article in ToI stated that NMMT was in talks with App Developers to create an app to book an AC Bus ticket. A rather interesting development indeed.

In November 2014, ten months ago, NMMT was issuing punched tickets on its Volvo bus on Route AC-105. I was given 3 tickets of ₹20, one of ₹10 and one of ₹5 for a ticket worth ₹75. This was two months after I had got my BEST smart card. The situation was the same in April 2015.

A 5 rupee punched ticket issued by the Navi Mumbai Municipal Transport. Image copyright Srikanth Ramakrishnan, CC-BY-SA 4.0 International. Image available on the Wikimedia Commons.

Now, with punched tickets, and no Electronic Ticket Machines in sight, this could only mean that NMMT is manually handling accounts as well. With such a system in place, how do they expect to go straight to App based bookings? How will the conductor add it to his or her tally? Or will they treat the passengers similar to the way they treat a passholder for a limited route or distance? There are a lot of questions involved in this, so let us have a look at the possible problems that might occur.

Let us take an NMMT route with significant competition along it and examine what might happen:

Route: Borivili Station [East] – Thane Station [East] via Ghodbunder

There are four buses that run primarily on this route:

BEST 700Ltd: This is a non-AC service, with limited stops. [50 stops]
BEST AS700: This is an Air-Conditioned service with fewer services than 700Ltd. [44 stops]
TMT AC65: This an AC service with fewer stops than AS700. [18 stops]
NMMT AC121: This is an AC service with the same number of stops as AS700. [44 stops]

Now, given the competition along this corridor, we can say that just like the Bangalore-Chennai or Mumbai-Pune corridor, if one misses one bus, rest assured they will have another one, assuming they are not a Pass holder or a BEST prepaid card holder. For most people living in Borivili, being passholders, AS700 would be the ideal choice. For those living in Thane, AC65 would be the ideal choice. NMMT ideally would be catering to commuters between Borivili and Airoli, or Thane and Airoli.

Now, NMMT is planning an app for its commuters to buy tickets. The purpose of the app can vary. It may be to allow cashless travel, or paperless travel like the Indian Railways UTS app for the Suburban Railway lines across Mumbai and Chennai. However, if this was the case, then why is NMMT still issuing punched tickets? Another purpose of the App can be to reserve a seat, similar to CityFlo or rBus. However, my question is, if NMMT is still on punched tickets, this will lead to a big mess. For example: What if all the seats in the bus are full, and a commuter waiting for the bus has reserved a seat using the app, and walks into the bus to see there are no seats free? The app-user cannot be denied a seat since they paid for it, and the conductor cannot ask a seated passenger to get up. Similarly, if the app is indeed for paperless ticketing like the Railway app, how does it help in curbing frauds? The UTS app currently works in two ways:

One is the GPS method, which works on select routes, mostly the Western and Central lines wherein you have to be either inside the station premises or within a certain radius of the station in order for the app to work. The ticket doesn’t need to be printed and showing the app screen is enough if a TTE comes along.
The second method is the Printed Ticket method. This works on non GPS enabled routes, where after a ticket is bought, it needs to be printed. A reference number is given, which can then be entered into an Automatic Ticket Vending Machine [ATVM] at the Origin Station. The ticket cannot be printed anywhere else to prevent frauds.

How does NMMT plan to do this? The first method would be problematic since not all buses are equipped with GPS, unlike their purple counterparts with the BEST. The second method would be cumbersome for the conductor to punch in a number into their machine, if they have one, to log it. Since, they use punched tickets, the conductor would have to note down the number on a sheet to submit to the depot manager.

All this leaves a lot to wonder. Is NMMT equipped to handle all this? Can they outdo BEST at BEST’s own game?

Only time will tell us.

BEST Limited: A futuristic vision

After Uber and Ola started eating into BEST’s AC profits, it’s time for the Red Bus [not the Bus Booking Website], and also the Purple siblings to face some more competition, this time from it’s own brethren. The future of something as elementary as Transport seems to be in the hands of apps these days. After aggregators such as Lyft and HeyTaxi, for four wheelers and two wheelers respectively, now there is an app for a bus as well. It seems like more bad news for BEST.

Many of these services, such as rBus, CityFlo, Shuttl, ZipGo, are primarily running their services in the Bandra-Kurla Complex, where, BEST has only 2 AC services; AS5 and A77Exp. These buses seem to be a general public equivalent to the MetroZip service for employees in Hinjewadi which took away revenue from the PMPML.

Now, let us treat BEST as another organisation here, not a public transport unit. At the end of the day, the Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport [BEST] undertaking is an autonomous body under the aegis of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai [MCGM]. It would be wise to compare BEST vs the rest with either the Mumbai-Pune corridor or the Bangalore-Chennai corridor:

Mumbai-Pune: MSRTC has buses plying between Pune Railway Station or Swargate and Dadar, Borivali or Thane. There are numerous other companies on the same route, such as Neeta, Metrolink, Prasanna, Purple, MTDC, Konduskar, and even KSRTC. Rest assured, if you miss one bus, you’ll have one of the others waiting for you at any given time.
Bangalore-Chennai: KSRTC alone has 40+ services in a day between the two cities, with others such as TNSTC, SETC, Sharma, National, KPN, SRM, and various others. Again, rest assured, if you miss any one, you can get yourself a seat on any of the others.

Now, coming back to BEST, let us look at their connectivity to BKC alone, this being a premium Central Business District, with major financial services, the National Stock Exchange, and the Bharat Diamond Bourse, among others having their base here. The area can be compared to Electronics City of Bangalore, in terms of contribution to the economy, both local and national. It is but natural, that connectivity, especially the premium kind is present.

BEST has a branded bus service on the lines of the Fort Pheri, labelled BKC-1, 2, and 3 connecting it to Bandra Bus Station [East] and Kurla Station [West], but these are non AC services, and thus, not enough.

Now, let us look at the larger picture here, and not just the BKC region. Now, CityFlo and rBus have multiple routes criss-crossing the city. What do they offer, that makes them a better option?

Assured seating.
Air Conditioned service.
Online or in-app payments.

Now, this can be compared with a BEST bus, say A74Express from Oshiwara Depot to Worli [Lotus]. There are two buses at 8am and 8.30am from Oshiwara and two at 5.35pm and 6.05pm to Oshiwara. The route and timings are based on timings of offices located in and around Worli. A vast majority of the commuters are pass holders and there are a few who buy tickets, many of them opting for a Daily Pass, thus implying that they have a Prepaid card. Due to this nature, you invariably get a seat to sit, and very rarely do you see people standing in these buses. The bus is air-conditioned, either a Cerita, or a Volvo. If you are a pass or prepaid card holder, payment is again, a cashless affair. So what makes a passenger prefer these buses over a BEST?

The app affair

Wouldn't it be great if these two were together on an app instead? — Wouldn’t it be great if these two were together on an app instead?

BEST may not have an app, but as far as routes, and timings are needed, it does not need one. m-Indicator is easily the most useful app on my phone. It keeps me connected with details of BEST, NMMT, MBMT, VVMT, TMT and KDMT buses, as well as suburban trains across all lines, plus Metro, Monorail, Ferries, and also gives me details of Indian Railways trains departing from the city. The only thing missing is MSRTC timings. Indian Railways meanwhile, has an app, aptly titled UTS to let users book Unreserved Tickets on suburban trains in Mumbai and Chennai. The app uses GPS to ensure that you are at the right station.Now, imagine if BEST were to offer that kind of a convenience. Buy a daily pass from your phone, and show the BEST app to the conductor. He scans the QR code and keeps going. Cumbersome, given that BEST has invested heavily in its Ticket machines for a long time. What if, like the UTS app only allows you to use GPS to book tickets, the BEST app allowed you to use Radio Frequency Identification/Near Field Communication [RFID/NFC], known to many as S-Beam on Samsung phones to load this, onto your BEST ID card? Purchase the pass on your phone, flash your ID and then show the card to the conductor, who verifies it like he does for normal passes. Sounds cool no?

While all this is indeed far fetched, I dream of a day when BEST operates Public Transport services differently. It offers the basic bus services to its regular crowd, but also premium services, similar to those of a private bus operator for those willing to pay.

What do you say? It’d be great to see your responses in the section below.

Branded Bus Services

Branding Public transport has been an exercise tried out by many transport bodies worldwide, to various degrees. Few have succeeded, while few have failed in this venture.

There have been multiple attempts by various transcos in India at Branding services. While Metro Rail services have had branding as an integral part of them from Day 1, the same is not the case with buses, as many of them have been in operation for several decades now. Here, I shall attempt to break-down the branding used by our transcos, as well as try and understand some lesser known details about them. In the event you want to see how branding works outside of India, there is a research paper here.

Note, I have used the term CBD numerous times in the article below, for those who are unaware; CBD stands for Central Business District. It is invariably a part of the core city area where many offices exist. It is the equivalent for what Americans often refer to as Downtown.

A BMTC Big 10 bus on Route G1 in Bangalore. Image copyright Ramesh NG, CC-BY-SA-2.0, available on Flickr and the Wikimedia Commons.

The first time I heard of branding of bus services was in 2009, when BMTC launched the Big 10 and Kendriya Sarige series of buses. These were touted as a major change in BMTC services, and the way the public viewed the services. The Big 10 covered the main ten highways of Bangalore city, starting from the CBD, and were numbered G1 to G10 in a clockwise fashion. The number of routes has now been increased to 12. The Kendriya Sarige, or Hop-On, Hop-Off [HOHO] series, were Volvo buses in blue and orange liveries, doing clockwise and anti-clockwise routes in the CBD, with a flat fare. The HOHO was discontinued due to poor patronage and the buses were used on regular Vajra routes. The Vajra, and Vayu Vajra concept itself was the biggest branding that BMTC has ever done for its services. Branding AC Tata Marcopolo buses as AC Suvarna, to keep lower fares was also a good exercise. Post the success of the Big 10, the BMTC rebranded some of the 500 and 501 series of buses, running on Outer Ring Road, as the Big Circle series. Services were numbered C1, C2, et al. Similarly, the Inner Circle, numbered K1, K2, et al, was launched for buses on Inner Ring Road, and Chord Road. This continued with the silver-coloured Metro Feeder routes, and more recently the Big Trunk series, which is basically just giving existing routes a new, more complicated number [Which is easier; 360B, or KBS3A?]

PMPML experimented with branding back in 2008-2009 with the BRTS, also called the Rainbow BRTS, with the PMPML procuring Volvo B7RLEs [with openable windows] to run on the bus lanes on Satara Road from Swargate to Katraj and Solapur Road till Hadapsar.

A BEST Tata Starbus running on Fort Pheri 1, parked at CST. Image copyright Srikanth Ramakrishnan, CC-BY-SA 4.0 International, available on the Wikimedia Commons.

Now, let us move on to BEST. The BEST launched it’s Fort Pheri services in 2011. The Fort Pheri is probably the first branded bus service run by BEST in ages. Unlike BMTC, BEST does not brand its AC services. In fact, the BEST AC services, have a rather bad image, thanks to the Purple Faeries. So much for branding. So, BEST took their aging Tata Starbus fleet, gave them a pseudo makeover of sorts by painting them with a Fort Pheri Special livery. Some buses continue to operate with their original Starbus liveries, but most of them have been repainted to say Fort Pheri 1 or Fort Pheri 2 in Marathi. These buses were procured in 2004, break down very often, and thus were shifted to the Colaba Depot which is close to the route of these buses. They charged a flat fare, ran in clockwise and anticlockwise circles, and were an instant hit among office-goers in the CBD. A good move to make use of the fleet which was otherwise bleeding the BEST in terms of maintenance costs. Shortly after this, the BEST launched the Fort Pheri AC service. Unlike their non AC siblings, these buses had no special branding, but thankfully were not the Purple Faeries either. BEST decided to run all six of its Volvo buses from Oshiwara Depot to Backbay Depot on AS4, in the first six departures, park them at Backbay Depot, from where these buses would operate on Fort Pheri 1 and 2 AC till 3pm, before sending them back to Oshiwara as AS4. The remaining AS4 and A74Express would continue to have the Cerita buses on them.

Now that all the gyaan has been given, time to look at this whole exercise from a Marketing Point of View.

What does Branding of Bus Services entail? Why must it be done?

To answer this question, let us take a take a quick look at high-end services offered by two intercity transcos: MSRTC and KSRTC.

KSRTC has branded its basic Volvo B7R services as Airawat, with the B9R being branded as Airawat Club Class. Further, the Airavat Superia is a B9R with a pantry and Airvat Bliss has a toilet. The newly acquired Scania buses are branded as Diamond Class. Similarly, MSRTC has branded its B7R services as Shivneri and B9R as Ashwamedh, and has retained the same names for the new Regular and Dual Axle Scania Metrolink buses as well. All said and done, MSRTC still carries the ST legacy. It is known as ST, and ST is an official part of the logo [in Devnagari]. While the Mahabus, and Shivneri services were launched as premium AC services, people still associated these with ST. However, that has changed a bit. Last year, when I asked a traffic police officer at Dadar for the starting point of Pune bound ST buses, he told me “You’ll not get an ST bus, but only a Shivneri to Pune“.

Similar to MSRTC being called ST, BEST also has a brand readily available. The name BEST is a brand in itself. Unlike other transcos, BEST itself is a brand name. Similarly, in Tamil Nadu, TNSTC buses are referred to as Arasu Perundu which literally translates to Government Bus. Some transcos use a logo to identify themselves with, for example the Ahmedabad Janmarg, the Delhi Transport Corporation, Navi Mumbai’s NMMT, and even the BMTC. The BMTC logo is nothing but the Gandaberunda, which is a Mythological bird with two heads; used as a logo for most entities under the Government of Karnataka, even KSRTC and the other sister bodies in North Karnataka. Even BEST these days is seen with its logo, a bus inside a lamp, seen now as the watermark on tickets and often on the front of an AC bus, above the display.

Now imagine the following two scenarios:

You live in the suburbs of Mumbai. You rarely come down to Fort, simply because you don’t have to. One day, you make it to CST because you need to go to the National Centre for the Performing Arts [NCPA]. Would you rather take a Bus number 108, or a Fort Pheri 1?
You live in East Bangalore. You need to head to Banashankari one day. Would you rather take a Bus number 500A or a Big Circle C-1?

Thus, bus branding is an important exercise. There are several reasons why bus services must be branded, all with a marketing tactic behind it. Here are some of them:

The most logical reason why anyone would want to market anything: To increase the number of customers and improve revenue streams. With the advent of cab aggregators like Ola and Uber, buses are losing out big time.
To give a feel good factor to the commuter. Passenger comfort is crucial. In a city like Bangalore, a person may get out of a bus and hail a cab, or in Bombay, take a train, if the bus is not comfortable.
A higher fare. A branded service is a premium service, it can have a higher fare, like BMTC does with the Vayu Vajra series, which have much higher fares than the regular Vajras. There are exceptions however, like the Atal Sarige, again run by the BMTC.
Make optimum use of existing properties: BEST re-branded its aging, semi-retired, nearly decommissioned fleet of Tata Starbuses for the non-AC Fort Pheri, and the idle Volvo buses for the AC Fort Pheri. Similarly, when the Kendriya Sarige flopped, BMTC used the Volvo buses on regular routes to Electronics City and Bannerghatta.

At the end of the day, transport is very important, since our lives depend heavily on it. Not many of us are lucky enough to live close to our workplaces or daily commute destinations, and those of us who don’t, will end up taking public transport. When other things around us a branded, why not transport? If a person pays ₹180 for a coffee at Starbucks, instead of ₹20 at a roadside stall, he or she is doing it for the brand value. Similarly, one might walk in to a fancy parlour and spend ₹500 for a haircut, that the barber under the tree might charge ₹30 for. When everything else can be branded, and packaged as a premium item, why not transport? After all, a good transport system is not one that is used by all the poor people, but one that gets the rich to give up their cars instead.

Looking at BEST, it can certainly brand its services as premium, and offer a better travel environment to the daily commuter. BEST branded their Limited Stop Buses, plainly as Limited, and its Express services with the C-series of routes. It is now upto BEST to rebrand its AC services as well, as mentioned in the earlier post. Unlike BMTC, who branded Volvo and Corona services as Vajra and AC Tata Marcopolo services as AC-Suvarna, BEST branded all its AC services as AC, a move that MSRTC has also seemingly done. Unlike KSRTC, MSRTC treats the Shivneri and Ashwamedh on par and charges the same rates for the two.

I look forward to some interesting feedback from those who are in the marketing and branding scene. Please do leave your comments in the section below. If you liked this post, please do consider hitting the Flattr button below for some microdonation love.

The curious case of BEST and its AC buses

BEST and AC buses don’t exactly go hand-in-hand. Atleast not anymore. BEST should think of a way to reverse that.

Not so unusual site! An AC BEST of Mulund Depot runs southwards on BRTS-1 at Lalbaug — One of the original Ashok Leyland AC buses that the BEST procured in 1998. Image copyright, Ojas Parab, Flickr.

BEST introduced AC buses, back in 1998. These buses were built by Ashok Leyland and had Opening Windows. Tickets were a bit on the higher side, and included a newspaper [English or Marathi] and a 300ml bottle of water. These buses operated on the following routes routes initially:

A1 – Hutatma Chowk to Andheri Station (West)
A2 – World Trade Centre to Oshiwara Depot
A4 – Hutatma Chowk to Ghatkopar Bus Station
A422 – Agarkar Chowk to Mulund Bus Station
A461 – Mulund Bus Station (West) to Borivali Station (West)

These buses ran mostly in the mornings and evenings, mainly serving the office-crowd.

In 2008, under then General Manager Uttam Khobragade, BEST procured the first set of their purple ”Kinglong” buses. It took a lot of time to figure out that these Purple Faeries weren’t actually Kinglong buses. These buses were assembled in Punjab by Jaycee Coach Builders Limited [JCBL] and sold under their ”Cerita” brand.

The Kinglong buses owned by BEST were not Kinglong at all. Share on X

A BEST Cerita running on route AS 461. Also known as them Mumbai Purple Faeries. — A BEST Cerita running on route AS 461. Image copyright Srikanth Ramakrishnan, licenced under CC-BY-SA 4.0, available on the Wikimedia Commons.

These buses were powered by CNG, and unlike other AC buses, didn’t have a slave engine to power the air-conditioning unit, thus resulting in slow speeds and bad pickup. In simple terms, they struggle to climb the simplest of slopes. Yet, they had comfortable seats. These Purple Faeries used to breakdown frequently and some of them caught fire, thus leading to deteriorating quality of BEST AC services.

Somewhere around this time, BEST received a CNG version of the Volvo 8400 on the B7RLE chassis for trial runs. After a few weeks of trial runs from the Oshiwara depot, the bus was transferred to the Wadala Depot, after wihch it was returned to Volvo. Unfortunately, BEST never purchased the bus. It had a separate Slave Engine to power the AC, thus overcoming all the shortfalls of the Cerita buses.

Post this, BEST inked a deal with an advertising firm called Asian Concierge who were ready to supply BEST with 50 Diesel-powered Volvo 8400s in exchange for full body advertisements on them for 15 years. The deal was quite revolutionary and would have changed the transport scene, however, only 6 buses were procured. All of them belong to the Oshiwara Depot and ply on AS-4 between Oshiwara Depot and Backbay Depot.

A BEST Volvo on Route AS-4 from Backbay Depot to Oshiwara Depot. Image copyright Srikanth Ramakrishnan, CC-BY-SA 4.0 International, available on the Wikimedia Commons.

BEST was given 50 Volvo buses free, in lieu of advertising rights. Share on X

Now, the deal is that BEST, which was among the first Transcos in India to get AC buses is slowly phasing them out because of competition from the TMT, NMMT and MSRTC. For starters, BEST used to run a bus AS-505 from Santacruz Depot to CBD Belapur. They curtailed it because NMMT flooded the roads with AC-105 which ran from Bandra Bus Station to CBD Belapur. When I requested BEST to restart AS-505, they replied stating that it was a loss making route, and hence would not be possible. However, BEST’s 505Ltd is among the most profitable routes in the sector. Subsequently, NMMT has launched AC-106 which goes to CBD Belapur via Nerul (West). AC-105 remains their most profitable route.

Similarly, BEST’s AS-700 is doing miserably these days between Borivali Station (East) and Thane Station (East) because of competition from both TMT’s AC-65, AC-125, and NMMT’s AC-131. Now I can understand. Borivali comes under the jurisdiction of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai and Thane under the Thane Municipal Corporation, both pass through the jurisdiction of the Mira-Bhayandar Municipal Corporation as well, but NMMT? AC-131 starts from Borivali Station (East), takes the same route via Ghodbunder Road to reach Kopri [Thane Station], from where it proceeds to Airoli Sector 5, via the Mulund-Airoli Bridge, thus running a total of 9km within its own jurisdiction. What is the need to enter Thane Station? NMMT plies two more AC routes to Borivali, AC-123 and AC-125, from Borivali to Ova Camp in Kharghar. Both take Jogeshwari Vikhroli Link Road, where one takes LBS Marg, and the other the Eastern Express Highway, to reach the Mulund Airoli Bridge and then continue along Thane-Belapur Road. Where is the logic in this? The irony is that if you calculate the number of stops between Dindoshi Junction and the Mulund Airoli Bridge Toll Plaza; here is the interesting result that you get:

BEST 523 Ltd has 42 stops.
BEST 525 Ltd has 36 stops.
BEST AS-524 has 23 stops.
NMMT AC-123 has 43 stops.
NMMT AC-125 has 36 stops.

This makes BEST the fastest on this route. With fewer stops, any bus runs faster. This is the theory under which Limited Stop Services normally operate.

TMT runs a bus from Cadbury Junction to Agarkar Chowk in Andheri East. This bus enters Mumbai via the Mulund (West) Check Naka and takes the same route as AS-422 to reach Andheri. It travels a total of 3.5 km within Thane and close to 21km in Mumbai. NMMT’s Borivali to Kharghar routes overlap majorly with BEST’s AS-461.

As if all this was not enough, the MSRTC, went one level over all of this, by launching their now-discontinued Shivneri Corporate service. These buses where the regular Shivneri Volvo B7R buses running along the Kandivali-Bandra Kurla Complex [BKC] route, non-stop. BEST plies A77Express on the same route, at the same hours. The only difference was that A77Express started from Gorai, took all flyovers on the Western Express Highway and had a total of 20 odd stops while the Shivneri had none. The service was soon shelved because the fare of ₹100 one way was too high.

What BEST must do now:

BEST must start looking into the profitable routes of the competition and find ways to maximize its revenue streams there. One must remember that all TMT and NMMT AC routes enter Mumbai. None of them are entirely within their territories.

BEST here has an advantage that they must make use of completely. Electronic Ticketing Machines and the Public Information System are two features that only BEST has in its kitty. Prepaid cards, a Daily Pass system for AC buses, and GPS based tracking of buses is what can help position BEST above its competition.

BEST must also pursue the matter with Asian Concierge for the remaining of the 50 Volvo buses so that newer routes can be planned. BEST must allocate these buses onto these routes.

Possible Routes BEST can try out are:

Restart AS-505 from Santacruz Depot to CBD Belapur. Run it every half an hour. Make sure the Bus Tracking system works for it.
Start a bus, exclusively for the Western Suburbs. It can be on the lines of AS-4 from Oshiwara, but should terminate at Bandra, and can take alternate routes like going into Seven Bunglows and taking the route taken by 56. Run it at half hour intervals. With rising auto fares, people will definitely take these buses. Start similar buses along the Central Suburbs in both West and East.
Increase the frequency of AS-6 which connects Backbay Depot to King’s Circle. Let this be a bus that connects the Central Part of South Mumbai. Similarly run a bus from Backbay to Chembur along the Eastern areas. The Western part of South Mumbai is served by AS-4, whose frequency should be increased.
Start an AC bus from Mantralaya to CBD Belapur and to Kopar Khairane. Route these buses via Tadeo, Lotus (Worli) and then go towards Navi Mumbai. Perhaps an Express service can work here, via the Sea Link, land up at Sion and go on to CBD Belapur, while avoiding Vashi Bus Station.

BEST must innovate and provide more options for commuters. BEST has an edge over the other two players, which it is sadly not making good use of. Being India’s oldest Public Transport Corporation, I hate to see BEST lose out to newer entities who are just flooding the roads with their buses, and turning BEST buses into Bus. No 8954.

BEST must innovate with their AC fleet for the benefit of Mumbai. Share on X

In 2015, BEST brought out some drastic measures including curtailing of a few routes, reducing frequencies of AS700, cancelling AS706, and scrapping AS422 on Sundays.

Early 2016, NMMT placed orders for Volvo B7RLEs that were Diesel-Electric Hybrids. Shortly after that, MMRDA purchased 25 AC Tata Starbus Electric-Diesel Hybrids which would ply on dedicated lanes in Bandra-Kurla Complex. The impact of it, is to be seen.

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Electronic Ticketing Systems: Who got it right and how

Electronic Ticketing Systems are commonly used now-a-days. Here, we take a look at the various aspects of Electronic Ticket Systems, and how they fare compared to Manual Fare Collection systems.

Before we delve into the world of ETMs, let us begin with Manual Fare Collection in different parts of the country and how things were different then.

Manual fare collection systems have been prevalent in India for decades in different fashions. Trancsos like BEST, NMMT, PMPML, MSRTC have had standard punched tickets, while their southern counterparts like BMTC, KSRTC, MTC, TNSTC have similar looking tickets, though they may not be punched.

A ticket box with tickets waiting to be punched in a BEST Bus in Mumbai, India. — A ticket box with tickets in in a BEST bus in Mumbai. Image copyright Srikanth Ramakrishnan, CC-BY-SA 4.0, available on the Wikimedia Commons.

What did Manual ticketing entail for the conductor as well as the commuter?

Different tickets with different denominations had to be printed, serial numbers had to be stamped and then delivered to the depots, from where they’d be handed over to the conductors. Now this would have hardly been an issue with Transcos like NMMT and TMT who have just 2 depots each, but it becomes a headache for larger ones like BEST or BMTC with 26 and 43 depots respectively. The problem is compounded when it comes to State level transcos as well.
What if the conductor runs out of a particular denomination? If it is a larger denomination, I’m sure he’d be able to give it in smaller denominations like BMTC and TNSTC conductors have given me but what if it is the smallest denomination possible.
The conductor has to remember stages for the entire route. Long-distance routes, become a pain in the neck.
Trip-sheet maintenance was a herculean task for all conductors, they had to count the number of tickets sold, tally it with the money they got and get it approved by the Depot manager.
It becomes a headache for the Ticket Examiner as he has to decipher the stage and fare in a bus full of people.
If the passenger [like me] collects tickets and keeps a bunch of them in his or pocket, and the Examiner asks for your ticket, well, I was let off with a warning because I was 11.
The upside of these tickets were that they were equivalent to Collectors items. While American kids grew up with Trading Cards at the same time, we grew up trading our bus tickets. They were colourful, had different numbers, and different punchmarks on them. Unless it is a PMPML ticket.

Now, let us make the transition to Electronic tickets.

A handheld ticket machine used in BEST buses in Mumbai. Image copyright Srikanth Ramakrishnan, CC-BY-SA 4.0 available on the Wikimedia Commons.

My first interaction with Electronic Ticket Machines [ETMs] was in 2008 when I had shifted to Bangalore. BMTC was using the MicroFX BTM series at that time. These devices were used on various routes, mostly on Suvarna and Vajra services. These machines however, disappeared somewhere around the onset of 2011. Around 2010, I saw some MTC and mofussil routes of TNSTC use these machines on certain routes, as well. KSRTC [Karnataka] had deployed these machines in 2004, and by 2008, the entire on-board ticketing was done using ETMs. MSRTC too, today has implemented ETMs across Maharashtra, for both, on-board ticketing, as well as the off-board ticketing on their Shivneri and Hirkani routes.

Now, let us look at some of the benefits the ETMs have given our transcos. I have taken this from a Case Study on KSRTC by the World Bank and a Case Study on MSRTC by CIO.IN.

The need to run a printing press to print tickets has gone. Along with it, the overheads of transport and running an entire accounts team to monitor the process is eliminated.
Conductors no longer need to maintain a trip-sheet. The data is already on the ETM, so they just have to synchronise it with the Depot, either at the end of the day, or wirelessly on the fly.
These systems allow the Corporation to monitor routes in real-time. This means that statistics and revenue details can be had for any route, at any given point in time, which helps in maintaining an efficient route network, eliminate overlapping routes, modify loss-making routes, and more.

Now, after all this, one would like to assume that whoever implemented ETMs would be better off than those who didn’t. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. As is the case with most new ventures in India, a venture is only as good as its implementation.

Here are a few instances of problems:

The PMPML, ended up scrapping its entire ETM range because they were unable to back up any of the data from it. The ETMs were failing as often as their buses.
The BMTC scrapped its initial set of ETMs and then got a newer set later on.

However, only one organisation in India has taken full advantage of Electronic Ticketing Machines, and that is the BEST. The BEST, in 2011, decided to go the MRTC way by partnering with Trimax IT for its Electronic Ticketing System. As per the Trimax Case Study on BEST, the arrangement was made under a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) agreement where Trimax would supply the infrastructure needed and keep a percentage of the revenue generated.

So, what was the deal all about?

Well, here goes:

All Ticket boxes were replaced with ETMs.
All bus passes were replaced by RFID cards.
Trimax set up a Server, which runs on Open-Source Software.
Setting up an online payment system for Bus Passes.
The all important ePurse.

The template of a BEST RFID bus pass. It has the Users photo in the box, and their name and ID number on the right

The most important parts of this development were:

Connecting a Bus Pass to the ID card
The ePurse Concept.

In the last few years, several Transcos have insisted on an ID card for issuing Daily Passes to prevent their resale. BMTC started charging extra for passes if the commuter did not have a BMTC ID. BEST went one level ahead by saying a Daily Pass could only be bought if the user had an RFID card. This eliminated the need for manual verification and validation of both the ID as well as the pass. Simply scan under the ETM and it tells the Conductor whether a Pass has been issued or not.

The ePurse, on the other hand, is basically a prepaid card. It allows the holder to purchase upto 6 tickets at one go, and allows for any amount of tickets to be purchased, so long as there is a minimum of ₹50 balance on the card. The ticket that is printed, comes with the balance printed on it.

BESTs ETMs are connected to the servers via GPRS, thus keeping them in-synch, eliminating the need for conductors to transfer data manually. This also helps in sending announcements and notifications to the conductor and driver. When fares are revised, the ETMs automatically pick it up.

In order to do this, BEST had to create an entire database with the names of each bus stop, with their coordinates, routes that halted there and assigned each of them a unique ID. This ID can be found on the physical bus stop. It can be used to find out the Estimated Time of Arrival of a bus by sending BEST<space><Bus Stop ID> to 56060. Each bus is connected with a GPS unit that transmits data to the server.

Now all this may sound rosy, but to be honest, may not not work outside of BEST. It may not work with NMMT, TMT, PMPML, or BMTC. The reasons are:

- - No fixed bus stops, especially in newer areas. Without fixed bus stops, it can’t be named and assigned an ID.

Specific BEST bus stops have specific buses stopping at them, some of the others don’t. Thus, there may be four Unipoles at a Bus stop, each with a different bus marked on it, each with a different ID.

Thus, I think it is clear that at the end of the day, BEST is indeed the BEST here. They have done a truly wonderful job with their system. MSRTC is close behind, with KSRTC just missing the real-time synchronisation. Other transcos, must try and catch up, or risk losing revenue due to leaks.

The 56 saga

Greetings, and welcome to my new post.

This post is to explain the significance of the number 56 in my life.

My connection with this number started out in a mundane way, yet the significance today seems cosmic. I see 56 everywhere, including in politics, for after all, our Prime Minister has a 56-inch chest.

Jokes apart, let me start at the beginning. The very beginning.

The first BEST bus I have ever taken was 505Ltd. The bus that today runs between Bandra Bus Station and CBD Belapur Bus Station. This was back in 1998, I don’t quite recall where the bus terminated, but I remember we had taken it from Vashi to Bandra and then took an autorickshaw to Santacruz. Subsequently I shifted to Andheri, and with a school bus or a car around, taking a BEST was a once-in-blue-moon activity. However, if and when I did board one of them, it was invariably a 38 or a 79, then running on the Hutatma Chowk-Goregaon Depot and Gadkari Chowk-Charkop routes. Circa 2002, we shifted to a new house. We had exactly three buses then: 38, 56 and 221 [Yari Road to Andheri Station via JVPD]. I was bad at Hindi and used to dance at that time. This meant tri-weekly trips to Seven Bungalows and bi-weekly trips to Versova for classes. The former, had a common bus stop for both 56 and 221, while the latter, had separate ones. Being tired, I’d usually walk to the closer bus stop, and 56 it was. 56 was also the most reliable bus to go to school, math tuition later on, and to meet my friend. Thus, over a period of 5 years, 56 became the most used bus for me. Bus number 56 made a casual appearance in my life, in various drawings, poems, stories and what not.

Circa 2008, I moved out to Bangalore. BMTC couldn’t fill the void that the lack of BEST had caused. Bad bus services, closing doors, in and out of the same doors, and horrible route planning made me dislike them strongly, but then, Volvo services helped out once in a while. Most of my trips were restricted to 365, 356 and their various sub-routes. Three years later, I was in Coimbatore. I saw 56 multiple times in a day, but it went in a different route, and I was never interested.

Fast forward to 2014. I come to Pune. I make a trip to Bombay, where I see 56. Memories are relived, I am transported back to 2007. The only difference is that it no longer uses a Rolling Cloth Display but now uses a scrolling LED display.

It was at that moment, that I decided to Start my Project 56. I managed to click buses number 56 operated by the PMPML, TMT and BEST. I convinced a friend to click Abu Dhabi, Madrid, and Winnipeg as well. My crazy mind decided to take PMPML 56 to Wadgaon from Shanipar. It took me through Sinhagad Road, which soon became among my favourite parts of Pune. Soon, I started travelling all the way to Versova to click a BEST 56. It took several attempts, but one day, after a polite chat with a driver, I managed to get it. A perfect click. Two months ago, I clicked the newly launched NMMT 56 between Kalamboli and Mansarovar Railway Station.

I’ve been seeing 56 everywhere ever since I came to Pune. It once cost me ₹56 in an auto to meet a friend. I clicked a photograph of the Tunnel on the Dehradun-Saharanpur National Highway and the timer on the traffic signal showed me 56 seconds. I was however, upset that I couldn’t click a BMTC 56, which is very rare, or a DTC 56, which got scrapped a month before I went to Delhi.

And that, is my obsession with 56.

For the sake of saying so:

BEST 56: Worli Village – Versova Yari Road Bus Station

बेस्ट ५६: वरळी गांव – वेसावे यारी रोड बस स्थानक

PMPML 56: Shanipar – Wadgaon

पीएमपीएमएल ५६: शनिपार – वडगांव

TMT 56: Thane Station (West) – Tiku Ji Ni Wadi

टीएमटी ५६: ठाणे स्थानक (पश्चिम) – टिकुजीनीवाडी

NMMT 56: Mansarovar Railway Station – Kalamboli Police Headquarters

एनएमएमटी ५६: मानसरोवर रेल्वे स्थानक – कळंबोली पोलीस मुख्यालय

Show Some Love: Go on, Share!

Show Some Love: Go on, Share!

Show Some Love: Go on, Share!

Show Some Love: Go on, Share!

Show Some Love: Go on, Share!

Show Some Love: Go on, Share!

What BEST must do now:

Show Some Love: Go on, Share!

Show Some Love: Go on, Share!

Show Some Love: Go on, Share!