Similar to the decision of the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC), the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) of Chennai, fka Pallavan has also decided to implement a QR Code-based cashless ticketing mechanism on its buses.
The announcement was made by Tamil Nadu Minister of Transport M R Vijayabhaskar on 1 June 2020 via Twitter.
பேருந்துகளில் Cashless Transaction முறை அறிமுகப்படுத்தப்பட்டிருக்கிறது.
QR Code மூலமாக எந்தவொரு Cashless Transaction -ம் அனுமதிக்கப்படும்.
சோதனை முறையில் முதற்கட்டமாக 2 பேருந்துகளில் Paytm மூலம் Transaction செய்வதற்கான ஏற்பாடுகள் செய்யப்பட்டிருக்கிறது. #TNGovt#TNTransport
— M.R Vijayabhaskar (@OfficeofminMRV) June 1, 2020
In his tweet, Vijayabhaskar has said that QR-code based cashless transactions were now permitted and that a trial run had begun using Paytm. According to a report by The Hindu, the two buses were both bound for the Secretariat at Georgetown with one originating at Thyagaraya Nagar (T Nagar) and the other at Todhunter Nagar in Saidapet.
Officials at MTC have said that once more buses hit the street, the system will be extended to them as well. Commuters can use any UPI-based payment app such as Google Pay/Tez, Paytm, PhonePe, KhaaliJeb or their bank app.
The system is very similar to the system that the BMTC has set-up, which is essentially only for cashless transactions and not cashless ticketing.
While the immediate side-effect of this would be an increase in UPI adoption across Chennai, it will still remain a time-consuming method. In the long run, the state government has to promote the National Common Mobility Card as a means to go forward.
One hopes that the MTC’s parent body, the Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (TNSTC) starts extending this to other cities including Coimbatore, Trichy and Madurai.
For UPI platforms, this is a golden opportunity to expand their footprint. While the better known apps like BHIM, PhonePe, Google Pay (formerly Tez) and Paytm have managed to get a market of their own, smaller niche apps like KhaaliJeb can make an impact here. KhaaliJeb (literally Empty Pocket in Hindi) is a UPI-based payments app designed for students. According the developers, the app has a student loyalty that will offer them discounts from merchants while also allowing them to split expenses. Given Chennai and Coimbatore’s status as educational hubs, this is the right time for such apps to strike gold.
If all goes well, it might seem like the Pallavan Kollavan (Killer Pallavan) tag might actually refer to cash.
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Featured image: An MTC bus belonging to the Central Depot on Route 21G from Broadway to Tambaram Railway Station. (Photo credits: VtTN on the Wikimedia Commons).
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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BEST, which had announced conductorless buses as far back as 2015, has been rather successful at operating conductorless buses with their new AC minibus fleet.
However, one thing seems to have gone unnoticed is that BEST has been trying out its conductor-less buses with it’s non-AC fleet as well. Among the routes known are 477 from Borivali Railway Compound (East) to Rushi Van, 248 from Andheri Station (West) to Ramesh Nagar and 298 from Borivali Railway Station (East) to Raval Pada. The buses used in these are BEST’s CNG-powered Midi-bus fleet with their rear door closed.
A conductorless bus on route 477. Image: Yash Mhadgut/Twitter.
Now, according to Yash, who shared this image on Twitter, this is used on routes where the number of stops are very few. In his tweet, he says that 2/3 of the buses on 298 are conductorless, which is a bad move. He says that major passenger flow is in peak direction (towards station in the mornings and from station in the evenings) and there are people boarding and disembarking at all stops. Skipping stops isn’t ideal as well, he argues, stating that there are a sum total of seven buses on the route.
I’m inclined to agree here. What are your thoughts?
Are conductor-less buses feasible on every route?
Featured image: A bus conductor waiting for an AC conductor-less bus at Mahalakshmi Station
Today, I had the luck of having a candid chat with a BMTC Volvo conductor at Shanthinagar. Here is a quick summary of what all I learned:
Lack of confidence in the new ticketing machines: The new Verifone ticket machines [procured by Trimax, yes the same Trimax who set up BEST’s system]. Apparently, these new machines hardly last for the sale of 100 tickets before the battery dies out. This, happens on a full charge after being plugged in for 6 hours. The earlier Quantumn Aeon machines, still being used by KSRTC lasts a full two days on a full charge. The new machines are also prone to system crashes, and lack of connection to the server. He equated the new ETMs with the AC Tata Marcopolo buses, which frequently broke down [similar to BEST’s Purple Faeries].
Frequent breakdowns due to complete lack of maintenance: He said that all buses, including the Corona and Volvo fleet were not maintained at all and were prone to breakdowns, especially on Airport services. If a bus broke down on the road, it would lead to them getting a Challan from the Traffic Police, and if it happened in a Bus Station, BMTC would issue a memo. The fines would get deducted from the salaries of both the driver and conductor. Due to this happening, cases of staff committing suicide has also seen a significant rise. He mentioned that these would go unreported more often than not.
Actions taken on faulty parts: When any LED display got spoiled, conductors and depot workers normally try to fix it. They have gained knowledge on fixing the circuit after years of experience. However, if the administration, got wind of it, they’d junk it and procure a fresh piece which would normally cost anywhere from ₹50,000 to ₹1,50,000.
Kickbacks while purchasing buses: Apparently, babus and politicians have got huge kickbacks while buses were purchased, resulting in losses to the exchequer.
Lack of attention from higher ups: Complaints about faulty equipment, breakdowns, etc go unheard. Staff is supposed to fill out their feedback and personnel details and put in into a box, which goes unseen for ages.
Overall, he said that BMTC alone could fill a book in terms of mismanagement, maladministration, and general negligence on the part of the higher officials.
He further added, that due to the additional 6% Luxury tax charged by the government, which BMTC has not yet integrated into the Electronic Ticketing System, conductors have to sell the extra surcharge as paper tickets and keep a stagewise log of these extra tickets being sold.
I was told that the reason BMTC discarded the earlier machines for the new one was to enable RFID integration for the near-future Smart Card rollout, which is rather strange, because according to MicroFx and Quantum Aeon,the ETMs used earlier were RFID enabled.
That is all in this post. A follow up post on the BMTC ITS will come soon.
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.
