PMPML – Page 3 – BESTpedia

Buses in Pune: How the PMPML managed to clean up its act

PMPML: Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Limited, (Pune Metropolitan Transport Corporation Limited) is the Transport unit that serves the twin cities of Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad. It has been panned by one and all ever since its formation in 2007 for various reasons, from the valid ones like poor quality of buses, to the inane ones like bad looking buses.

My first interaction with buses in Pune began back in 1999 when I visited the city for the first time. Having lived in Bombay for a year, and having travelled in BEST buses then, Pune buses were a bit disappointing, to say the least. It was even more odd because there were buses marked PMT and PCMT. I used to wonder why the same organisation would have different names on their buses.

I soon found out that they were different entities. PMT was Pune Municipal Transport, operated by the Pune Municipal Corporation. It had seven depots, Narveer Tanajiwadi, Kothrud, Hadapsar, Swargate, Katraj, Pune Station, and Market Yard, with it’s head office being located at Swargate, next to the MSRTC Pune Division office. PCMT was the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Transport, operated by the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation with three depots at Pimpri, Nigdi and Bhosari.

The two of them operated independently, without entering into each-others territories except in rare routes, such as those to Pune Station and Wakad. Both of them had a track record for bad services, zero punctuality and rickety buses. In 2005, the Supreme Court made a recommendation that the two bodies be merged to provide better services, which the State Government ensured in 2007. Thus, on 15 October 2007, the PMPML was officially formed after it received its Commencement Certificate.

The major advantage of the merger was seen shortly after it happened. Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad were now treated as one large region, the Pune Metropolitan Area. If this move had to be compared, it can be compared to when BEST took over the Bandra Bus Company in 1949. As a unified body, PMPML had access to funding from both the PMC, as well as the PCMC. The combined population of both cities and their JnNURM eligibility was an added bonus. However, the new body was partly autonomous, like BEST, thus it had to bear its own financial losses and neither Municipal Corporation was liable to bail it out.

It was just before this time that the PMT managed to acquire a few Volvo B7RLE (8400) buses for use on its planned Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS). The BRTS, later renamed to as the Rainbow BRTS, was officially launched in 2009 by the PMC and PMPML. Unlike the Ahmedabad Janmarg, the initial line of Rainbow BRTS was merely a set of bus lanes with bus stops on the centre of the road. Basically, a replica of the Delhi BRTS. There was no off board ticket collection, no level boarding, nothing. The route ran from Katraj to Swargate and then to Hadapsar. Bus lanes were built on Satara Road from the Katraj Octroi Checkpost till Jedhe Chowk at Swargate. This set-up has been partly disrupted due to the Jedhe Chowk flyover and Dhanakwadi flyover. From Swargate to Hadapsar, the BRTS ran along with regular traffic through Pune Camp till Racecourse on Solapur Road where it again got a dedicated lane. Today, enforcement is lax, and all sorts of vehicles enter the bus lanes.

The old Pune BRTS uses Volvo B7RLE/8400 buses that belong to the Katraj Depot. This is the only time that I have seen anyone create openable windows on any Volvo bus. The buses have been badly maintained, are covered with paan stains on both, the inside and the outside.

The PMC and PCMC have been building a new Bus Rapid Transit System, this time, a proper one with Centre-stations, off board ticketing, et al, similar to the Janmarg. The PMC has built this along Nagar Road, connecting parts of Vishrantwadi, Alandi Road, Sangamadi, and Yerwada. The PCMC has built multiple corridors, mainly along the Aundh-Ravet-Kiwale and the Nashik Phata – Hinjewadi Phata routes with intersecting lines at Kalewadi Phata, Empire Estate and one major line along the Old Mumbai-Pune Highway from Nigdi to Dapodi.

A PMPML BRTS bus built by AGCL. These buses have BRTS doors on the right side. Image copyright Srikanth Ramakrishnan, CC-BY-SA 4.0 International, available on the Wikimedia Commons.

The PMPML ticketing system has been a rather controversial one. The PMPML started out with an eTicketing system in 2010 with a private firm called Vansh Nimay, which is known for running bus services for the NMPL in Nagpur. The system was similar to the one BEST and MSRTC had implemented with Trimax. However, there was one major flaw in the system that neither PMPML nor Vansh Nimay could do anything about. The system could not back up ticket sales and revenue data, thanks to both a technical glitch as well as a loophole in the agreement. Thus, Vansh Nimay got its commission for each ticket sold and the PMPML had no clue how many tickets were sold and how many conductors were actually pocketing the money. Subsequently, this was scrapped and the punched tickets returned, although this time, they were yellow in colour.

In December 2014, then State Inspector General of Registration and Controller of Stamps, Shrikar Pardeshi, an IAS officer, was given the additional responsibility of Chairman and Managing Director of the PMPML. Pardeshi had earlier managed PMPML in July 2013 where he rationalised all ticket stages to multiples of ₹5 to overcome problems with returning change. This time around, Pardeshi took some major steps towards reform, and managed to get most of the PMPML’s grounded fleet on the roads. The PMPML had 160 odd buses that were lying in depots for want of repairs, but couldn’t be fixed due to lack of funds. He set up a bank account for PMPML to deposit 6% of the daily revenue for purchase of spare parts. In less than 3 months, Pardeshi increased the functional fleet from 60% to 75%, which is a major turnaround. He worked on improving schedules, drivers efficiency, as well as addressing staff concerns, including health checkups for them. He stated in an interaction about his efforts to tie up with many NGOs and other bodies to set up a new website for the PMPML, and a proposed mobile app. He set goals and targets for revenue collections, passengers in buses, and advertisements. Unfortunately for PMPML, but fortunately for India, Pardeshi was called up to join the Prime Ministers Office as Deputy Secretary in April 2014. One hopes that he will create such a turnaround for the country in his new role.

In 2015, the PMPML announced a tie up with a Delhi based company along with the Central Bank of India to set up a new electronic Ticketing system. The system would be rolled out to conductors of the Pune Station Depot and then to others. These are expected to work similar to the ones in use by BEST in Mumbai.

PMPML, is now a better organisation, though it has miles [or kilometres] to go to reach the levels or efficiency that other Transport undertakings have reached. It needs more land for buses to park, better depots, better facilities for it’s staff.The Katraj Depot is the most profitable. Take a look at the Market Yard Depot and decide for yourself if it is worth calling it a depot.

PMPML buses at the Market Yard Depot. They are so rickety that they fly when they go over a speed breaker, and are called Udaan Khatara. Image copyright Srikanth Ramakrishnan, CC-BY-SA 4.0 International, available on the Wikimedia Commons.

Among various issues the PMPML still has to work on are; friendlier staff, more buses on schedule, cleaner buses, more buses to the outskirts. Route maps on bus stops, better bus stops, and bus stops with route numbers marked on them are needed.

Overall, I think PMPML has done a good job in the last one year, thanks mainly to he great capabilities of Srikar Pardeshi. With offers pouring in from firms like Asian Concierge to provide AC Volvo buses for free in lieu of advertising rights, similar to BEST, PMPML should seize them and make itself a brand name in the city. The PMPML has already lost a significant chunk of its revenue to MetroZip in the Hinjewadi region.

Have something to say about the PMPML? Feel free to post it in the comments 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.

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. Copyright, BEST.

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.

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Show Some Love: Go on, Share!

Show Some Love: Go on, Share!

Show Some Love: Go on, Share!