Feeder – Experiences of Partha Majumdar

Preface

Bangalore is known as the garden city in India. After the setting up of several IT Business Houses in Bangalore, it is now called the Silicon Valley of India. Traditionally, Bangalore had beautiful roads, which were well maintained. Almost all roads had trees lines on either sides. However, the roads were narrow. With burst of IT Professionals, the city has grown rapidly and most of the roads have been hemmed with buildings on either sides. This has led to major traffic congestions as the volume of traffic has increased owing to high affordability of the residents and no space available for making the roads wider.

Measures taken by the Authorities

The authorities seem to have 2 major solutions for the situation.

They declare many roads as one-way.

While this is a solution, it is not a good solution. Besides causing difficulties for vehicle owners, this leads to increased commuting distance; leading to more use of energy. This is a concern as India is not a country rich in Petroleum products and India does not yet have alternate sources of energy for running the vehicles.

There is an effort to shift the city outwards by including neighbouring empty areas.

While this is a practical solution and a natural evolution, it still posses several difficulties in the near future for the residents as the travel time is long for essential activities like going to work. Most companies provide buses to their work force. However, the numbers are so large and growing that this will not reduce any burden on the energy situation till residents move closer to their work places. Even this is not a sustainable solution as work force in IT sector tend to jump jobs often.

In conclusion, we can say that majority of the residents will continue living in the old city of Bangalore for a fair time in the future.

Now, the Problem Statement

In the old city, where most residents stay, the City Authorities have provided with State Transport Buses run by Bangalore Metropolitan Transportation Corporation (BMTC) (BMTC buses covers most of the other parts of the City as well). I think the authorities have procured large buses to carry maximum possible passengers in every journey. However, these buses have to navigate in narrow roads. This causes severe traffic problems and frequent congestions besides this causes severe accidents and damages many smaller vehicles.

One possible solution

In the old city, where Public Buses have been provided to each locality by BMTC, the City Administrators could replace the large buses with smaller buses. These smaller buses could act as feeders to the regular BMTC buses from the localities to central spots where roads are wide. Doing so could reduce pressure on the narrow roads in the localities of the old city.

What data is required for planning this implementation?

The data on width of each the roads across the City of Bangalore.

This data should be available with the Town Planners and the City Corporation.

The density of vehicles across the different parts of the City of Bangalore.

This data should be available with the Regional Transport Offices (RTOs). The density of vehicles can be correlated to the density of population in any area of Bangalore as most residents of Bangalore own some form of automobiles.

How this data can be used?

If a correlation could be determined between the density of population in an area and width of the road in the area, the areas where the feeder bus service needs operating could be established.