Last week the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM/BMC) announced a ₹750 crore financial package for the Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking as part of its annual budget for 2021-2022.
MCGM also announced that it will appoint a consultant to introduce reforms within the undertaking in order to improve efficiency and improve ridership. BEST had received an allocation of ₹918 crore in the previous year.
Among the initiatives proposed under the budget, BEST will modernise its bus depots, implement an intelligent transport system, focus on improving commuter experiences and also procure more buses on the wet-lease model.
Let’s hope BEST goes forward with its plans.
To know more about depot modernisation and how it works, do read this article I had written in 2017 about the Dindoshi Depot’s plan by WRI.
A month ago, I had spotted BMTC running trials using JBM’s Electric Bus fleet on Bannerghatta Road. In that post, I had also mentioned that BMTC had received bids from Veera, Ashok Leyland, and Olectra for trials of electric buses under the Centre’s FAME programme. Now while Olectra and JBM’s buses are popular across the country, the only city that used Ashok Leyland (AshLey) EVs was Chennai’s Metropolitan Transport Corproation (MTC). Launched by chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami in 2019, the buses are 9m long midi-buses and are completely air-conditioned.
Today, I spotted one of these buses on trials with the BMTC on Bannerghatta Road. Below id the image of the bus.
Ashok Leyland AC Electric Bus on Bannerghatta Road (Srikanth Ramakrishnan/BESTpedia via Wikimedia Commons)
Ashok Leyland had tied up with Swiss-Swedish ABB Group to manufacture electric buses. I had interestingly, blogged about this back in October 2016; do read it here.
That’s all for the time being. This is really just an update, not more.
When you step out, please do take appropriate precautions.
While walking along Bannerghatta Road, I happened to spot a bus that seemed odd. At the first glance, it looked a lot like the Tata Starbus Hybrid Diesel-Electric bus that BEST operates in Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC). As the bus came closer, I noticed that it was not a Tata bus, but rather a JBM bus.
Here is the picture of the bus that I snapped.
JBM EcoLife Electric bus on trials with BMTC on Bannerghatta Road (Srikanth Ramakrishnan/BESTpedia via Wikimedia Commons)
The bus is a JBM EcoLife Electric bus, bearing a green number plate with a Mathura (UP-85) registration, presumably because JBM has a bus manufacturing plant at Kosi Kalan, Mathura.
According to JBM’s page on the bus, the JBM Solaris EcoLife has two models, a 9m and 12m one. This is presumably the latter. Both have an 80-160 KW motor powered by a Lithium battery. It can be charged either with a plug-in mechanism or a pantograph. The bus features two inswing doors, one at the front and one in the centre, and features a manually operated wheelchair ramp.
This is the second time BMTC is trialing electric buses, the last one being the BYD Utopia in 2014. Cities in India are moving towards electric vehicles under the Modi Sarkar’s Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles in India (FAME India) scheme.
In 2015, BMTC had trialed a diesel-powered bus manufactured by Japan’s UD, a subsidiary of Sweden’s Volvo AB. Here is a snap of that too.
Volvo UD SLF on trials with BMTC (Srikanth Ramakrishnan/BESTpedia via Wikimedia Commons)
Coming back to electric buses, BMTC operated the BYD Utopia for about 4 months in 2014 but deferred purchasing it due to the high price tag of ₹2.5 crore attached to it. In October, The Hindureported that BMTC was receiving buses from Olectra, JBM and Ashok Leyland for trials. It also received bids from Veera Vahan Udyog. Veera is a Bangalore-based manufacturer of buses that has supplied a significant amount of BMTC’s Suvarna and JnNURM buses back in 2009. It has also been manufacturing three-door buses to take on the German Contrac Cobus 3000; some of these can be spotted at Kempegowda International Airport, operated by GlobeGround. Veera is also setting up a plant in Ananthapuramu (Anantapur), Andhra Pradesh to manufacture 3,000 electric buses a year. As reported by Bangalore Mirror, JBM is the lowest bidder to supply 90 buses.
Other cities that currently use JBM buses include Navi Mumbai. The Navi Mumbai Municipal Transport (NMMT) undertaking operates the blue-coloured 9m JBM EcoLife E9 bus, mostly along AC-105 from CBD Belapur to Bandra Railway Station (West).
Last month I had posted about the BMTC installing cycle racks to the front of their buses. I had also mentioned that the BMTC and BBMP were setting up dedicated cycle lanes across the city including a pop-up cycle lane along Outer Ring Road next to the existing pop-up bus priority lane.
Thanks to Twitter user Nihar Thakkar (@Nihart1024), I got to see some of the work being done. Here are some images and videos of the cycle lanes.
For starters, here is a cycle parking stand under the split flyover at Agara Junction on Outer Ring Road.
This is on the Service Lane of ORR near the junction of the road bound for Whitefield. You can see the under-construction section of the Purple Line bound for Whitefield.
Sadly, BBMP is using plastic reflective bollards. These bollards are pretty flexible and can easily be damaged. Someone on a joyride in the middle of the night can just mow down these bollards. I do wish, more sturdy ones or even a fence similar to the one that NHAI uses to separate the service lanes from the main carriageway on Hosur Road was used.
Work is moving at a brisk pace on both the north and south bound lanes. Hopefully markings and signage is installed soon for an effective trial. pic.twitter.com/ZBzHqPjLd0
Since the Cycle Lanes are separated by bollards, the likelihood of people parking their cars on them is limited. Also, since they are on the right hand side of the service lane, it is on the side of the road where nobody would (hopefully) park. I sincerely hope that BBMP replaces any damaged or removed bollards to prevent cars from entering these lanes and also does something to prevent motorbikes from entering these lanes. I also hope the cycle lanes don’t disappear when the road is resurfaced (as it happened in Jayanagar) and that BBMP will maintain a uniform quality for the road surface.
That being said, I hope pedestrian infrastructure is next in the pipeline.
Going a step ahead in trying to make Bangalore a friendlier city for cyclists, BMTC has installed cycle stands to the front of their buses.
Managing Director of BMTC C Shikha said that the fabrication of the stand was done by employees at BMTC’s Central workshop at Shanthinagar. In a report for Times of India, Christin Mathew Philip says that the BMTC also plans a pop-up cycle lane for 16 km between Central Silk Board and Lowry Medical College where a bus priority lane has also been marked.
Here is what the new cycle racks look like.
OMG! Just spotted a BMTC bus with a bicycle rack! The driver was really nice and let me try it out 🙂 🚴🚴 pic.twitter.com/7iAE6MImYv
This is the second time that the BMTC is experimenting with cycle racks on buses. The last time, Volvo had installed cycle racks on a few Volvo 8400 buses operated in and around Whitefield in 2011 but the experiment fizzled out after a while.
Apart from buses, Namma Metro too allows cyclists to carry their cycles on metro trains but only foldable cycles that can pass through the scanner ae allowed.
In a report for The Hindu, BMTC Chairman N.S. Nandiesha Reddy said that while 100 buses would initially be fitted with cycle stands, it would eventually be extended to the entire fleet.
Bangalore has experimented in many forms to get people to start cycling.
Between 2011 and 2012, the city partnered with Kerberon Automation to set up cycle stands across the city to promote the concept of rented cycles. Fixed cycle stands were set up in core areas (such as the Brigade Road bus stop where G-4 starts). Users would have to pay a deposit, get a smart card and then use the cycles. Around the same time, cycle lanes were made available in localities such as Jayanagar by demarcating the outermost section of major roads as cycle-only. However, these lanes were mostly used to park cars – which although a punishable offence was rarely punished. Eventually, they vanished, either after being dug up to lay utilities or when the road was resurfaced and the cycle lanes no longer marked.
By 2018, dockless cycles from private players such Yulu, Zoomcar PEDL and Ola Pedal had found a market in the city.
Let’s hope this time, the city learns from its past mistakes and promotes cycling in a big way.
P.S: If you’re planning to cycle around, do consider wearing a good mask. I’ve personally tried the 3M Aura Particulate Respirator to work well. It complies with NIOSH N-95 standards. Do check it out below. You can also try out the Savlon one if 3M masks are out of stock (which they are most of the time). Savlon is a good brand, owned by ITC (earlier Johnson and Johnson). Alternatively, you can try Wuerth, which was the first FFP1 standard mask that I tried.
Featured Image: Cycle Rack on a 500-D by Nihar Thakkar.
The Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking, which has pioneered the use of rolling cloth displays for its destination boards on buses for decades since inception, has finally found a solution to a problem that has plagued it for the last decade. Thanks to the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM; whose logo is a jurm for being ugly), most buses got themselves route indicator boards that were LED (light emitting diode) displays.
In the first five years since LED route indicators were introduced (2007 onwards), they stopped working. While BEST did try to fix them and look for alternatives including using a chalk board, the culprit was soon identified. The displayed began malfunctioning when buses were washed. Rumour has it that BEST contacted its southern counterpart, the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) in 2013, asking them how LED display units were functional after washing the bus. They allegedly received a very simple response: “What does washing a bus mean?“.
Keeping all this in mind, BEST has now decided to go a step forward and get a new technology using one of the most abundant elements available – dust. Yes, that’s right, BEST is now using Dust-Written displays now. Below is an image of one such display on Route 200 from Shrawan Yeshwante Chowk (Kala Chowky) to Versova Yari Road Bus Station.
After pioneering Rolling Cloth displays for decades, BEST buses are sporting a new technology: Dust Writing Displays.
We got in touch with freelance dust expert and garbologist Rajgira Khamandhokle to learn more. Readers may be reminded that Rajgira Khamandhokle is a frequent traveler on buses, having not once, but twice learnt a valuable lesson from a conductor. (You can read here and here)
We learnt that a dust-written display is extremely power efficient and eco-friendly. When we asked what would happen if the writing gets washed away in the rains, we were told that the amount of dust being kicked up on Mumbai’s roads would easily settle on the glass panel, making for an easy re-drawing.
The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) through BEST is sensitising the need of washing hands and that fans of the MCGM are seeing this as an eye opener campaign to bring down Covid19 (Wuhan Virus) cases in the city. An MCGM spokesperson who wanted to remain anonymous said that anyone who writes the destination on a bus would be given free sanitizer. Though he wanted to remain anonymous and that we over here don’t care about such a concept, we would like to informe that he doesn’t work at the Ghatkopar Depot and his name is not Mahesh Sakhalkar.
On noticing Tanu loves Manu written on one of the buses, Tinder was trying to capitalise on the new system and save the sinking Titanic.
Note: The above article is meant to be humourous.Please don’t register a police complain or send goondas to the writer’s residence.
Featured image: A cloth display on Bus 342 from Goregaon Station (East) to Kokan Vikas Mandal via New Zealand Hospital by Bhavik Vasa (via Twitter)
Last month I wrote on how we needed to look at changing our ways of transacting in order to reduce the risk of contamination using physical currency. One of the points I had made was to target the transit sector in order to get people opt for cashless transit.
Many of of us expected the 2016 demonetisation to be the catalyst for a shift to cashless methods of travel, sadly it did not take off well. A year later, the situation was no different in adoption of digital payment systems in public transport.
In September 2018, the Central government finally announced the launch of the ‘One Nation, One Transport Card’, a rebadged version of the previous government’s long-dead More Card project. The National Common Mobility Card (NCMC), was finally launched on 5 March 2019 (also my birthday) but is still being rolled out and as of now is only available on the Delhi Metro.
Older readers of BESTpedia would remember that I had spoken to BMTC officials in 2016 on their Intelligent Transport System (ITS) and the impending release of a prepaid card for buses (similar to what Mumbai’s BEST has). While the smart cards were never a part of the ITS, they were due to be released by the end of 2016 but that did not happen.
The Times of India on 27 May reported that BMTC would implement a new measure to enable cashless transit in its buses. While initially implemented on 70 buses, it is now being expanded to 1,000 buses of the 3,500 buses that are currently on the streets.
The cashless ticketing system, however is not what most of us expected.
Each bus is equipped with a quick response code (QR Code) that is compliant with BharatQR and uses the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) to make payments. Passengers can use any UPI-based app such as Paytm, Google Pay, or PhonePe to complete the transaction and once the transaction is done, the conductor issues a ticket.
Here is an image of the conductor with the QR Code handing around his neck.
It is important to note here that the QR code based payment isn’t direct cashless ticketing, but rather a cashless transaction after which the ticket is issued manually. It isn’t similar to the QR code based ticketing used by the Indian Railways using the UTS app, or by Metro Rail systems in India. The latter uses QR codes on phone screens or paper tickets that are scanned at the turnstiles rather than the commuter scanning them with their phones.
While this is a good move in the interim, it would be good to see BMTC implement a full-fledged card-based payment system, on the lines of the NCMC.
The unintended side-effects of this move
The QR code idea, however has its merits. The direct consequence would be more people adopting UPI as a payment method over physical cash systems. Commuters using UPI would mean that anyone remotely connected to the BMTC network –from a food vendor at the bus station to a tea stall frequented by staff – would start accepting UPI as a payment method. The entire “Local Economy” would end up making use of it over time.
All in all, this is a much-needed push by BMTC. The next stop would be a complete integration on to the NCMC so that we can go truly cashless. Who knows, the next big thing may be transcos accepting USSD-based payments as well. Alternatively, BMTC needs to push for app-based payments, similar to what Ridlr offers for BEST where a user purchases a ticket with the app which in turn generates a four to six digit number. The commuter tells the number to the conductor, who validates it with the ETM.
BMTC finally goes cashless, and how.
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Last week, trains, buses, metro all were operating at half capacity.
BEST banned standees, while the metro asked people to sit in alternative seats. They also then reduced services by half.
🙏Mumbaikars are requested not to travel standing in the BEST buses from tomorrow onwards as a preventive measure against the prevailing #COVID19 situation in the city. #bestupdates#Mumbai
Because it leads to overcrowding because not all people could work from home.
Plus, many were trying to get home.
Abandon! The attempt to lock down due to #CoronavirusOutbreak is having an opposite effect. More crowding at stations as people are swarming trains to leave the City of Dreams -Mumbai, going back to native places. Railways running special one-way trains to facilitate them now… pic.twitter.com/DazO1PtkcW
Note: This was before a complete lockdown happened.
Featured Image: Closed section near the driver’s cab from the interior in trolleybus 8010 on Line 74 in Budapest, at “Ötvenhatosok tere” trolleybus station. The section of the trolleybus near the driver’s cab is closed to protect the driver from the threat of coronavirus infection. (Vauia Rex/ Estonian Wikipedia)
Uber recently debuted its new Platform, Uber Movement (http://movement.uber.com) which will offer users access to its traffic data.
According to Uber’s blogpost on the same, Movement is meant to be a website that uses Uber’s data to help urban planners make informed decisions about our cities.
Now this might actually work out to be the best thing to happen to us!
Let us take Mumbai and Bengaluru as an example.
Both BEST and BMTC and an eTicketing system and an ITS with a vehicle tracker in place. With these two systems, the transco is able to:
Place the bus on a map.
Compute the number of tickets sold on different stages of different bus routes.
Superimpose the two onto a single dataset to identify where maximum passengers are and and what time. Using this data, one can come to the conclusion of time taken between two stops, and what time people are more or most likely to catch the bus.
Now, what can Uber’s data add to this dateset:
Average traffic conditions. While this can be ascertained using the Vehicle Tracking in Buses as well, Uber’s data is bound to be a little more accurate.
Alternative routes between two points. Since Uber relies on Google Maps for its navigation, it normally is able to plot multiple routes from Point A to Point B. This data can be used to launch additional bus routes.
The purpose of a Public Transport Undertaking like BEST or BMTC using Uber Movement’s data is to provide streamlined traffic flow.
Now let us take a real-world example:
Bengaluru
Building up on a previous post (Stuck in Traffic: How I Might Have Averted a Major Jam), let us assume that one would have to travel between Arekere Gate on Bannerghatta Road and the junction of 5th Main and 17th Cross in HSR Layout. As discussed earlier, there are two main routes. Traffic data from Google, Uber and BMTC’s ticket sales would be able to place things on a map. Since BMTC does not have a smart card system in place, it would be difficult to ascertain if the passengers disembarking at Jayadeva are taking a bus towards HSR Layout. If it did have a Smart Card system, or load passes onto an RFID card, this could be ascertained easily.
BMTC can then, based on traffic movements and passenger loads, introduce minibuses between Arekere and HSR Layout via Bomanahalli during peak hours.
Mumbai
Here, let us assume that one has to travel from Cadbury Junction, Thane to SEEPZ, Andheri.
Buses have two routes. Some of them like AS-422 take the Cadbury Junction-Marathon Chowk, Mulund Check Naka, Bhandup, Powai Route. Some, take the direct route by continuing on the Easter Express Highway and taking a right turn onto the Jogeshwari Vikhroli Link Road and then proceeding on to SEEPZ. Uber Movement can help BEST figure out when there is maximum congestion, and using its dataset on how many passengers and where they travel from and to, plan a more optimal route.
At the end of the day, Uber Movement is nothing revolutionary, it is merely Google Maps with a little more data, but more data is good for all of us.
What Uber Movement will certainly help us with is planning of land acquisition for newer transit projects, wider roads, metro lines, et al. But those are capital intensive projects. Newer bus routes would be the first step to implementing a full-scale transformation project. It will help make the city’s people smart, irrespective of whether city itself is smart or not.
Last week, I wrote an article on Swarajya about a little known Banking System that exists in India: USSD Banking, aka the National Unified USSD Platform (NUUP) that allows anyone with a basic GSM phone to perform financial transactions. You can read the article here: No Smartphone? You Can Still Transfer Money Using A Basic Mobile Phone
A user dialing *99# to access NUUP. Image: Srikanth Ramakrishnan/Swarajya
Now, to buses. Can we try and replicate the USSD Banking model for bus travel? Why not? We have two major applications for it.
Ticketing.
Tracking.
For all practical purposes, we will try and take BEST and BMTC as an example here. We will also assume a simple USSD number to dial: *456#
Ticketing
Since both BEST and BMTC have an Electronic Ticketing System in place, this can be relatively easy. It is easier for BEST, since BEST has all its bus stops numbered as well. Example: If I am at Nehru Planetarium/NSCI/Lotus bus stop at Worli, with a Bus Stop code 07187. I dial *456#, it asks me to enter the stop code, then I type 07187, it then asks me if I want to 1.Buy a ticket or 2. Know the arrival of buses, I choose 1. It then lists out the buses arriving in the next 30 minutes. I choose AS-4. It then lists out the stops from NSCI to Backbay Depot, I choose Backbay Depot, it asks for confirmation, I say yes. It deducts ₹75 from my wallet and sends me an SMS with the ticket details. It gives a 4-digit reference number which I show the conductor when I board the bus. He enters that onto his machine and that’s all.
Tracking
This is even more simpler than booking a ticket. The process is pretty much the same. Dial *456#, enter stop code 07187, choose 2 and it shows the list of buses. I choose AS-4. It shows the last stop the bus has crossed and the ETA, like : AS-4, Acharya Atre Chowk, ETA 4 min. This is similar to BEST’s existing SMS based system, but provides more real time data.
Shortcodes
A shortcode can be created enabling faster access to frequenters.
Eg: *456*1*07187# to open the list of buses to book a ticket. Or *456*2*07187# to open the list of buses to track then.
Pricing
Now comes the tricky part. Rates for the NUUP are charged, with a maximum cap set by TRAI at ₹1.5 per transaction. As far as tracking is concerned, the existing SMS system (although not functional right now) costs ₹3 per message. A ₹1 charge per transaction/lookup might be good for tracking. The issue comes for payments. Charging a rupee extra per ticket doesn’t sound like a good move. However, since BEST already charges ₹30 for the ePurse Card, and ₹10 per month for bus passes as administrative charges, it might not be a problem if it is charged as a rent from the user’s account.
What do you say? USSD Banking is here. USSD Bus Travel? Why not
