[sustran] Is Bengaluru’s bus system an intelligence failure?

[Vinay Baindur]

http://indiaclimatedialogue.net/2017/09/27/bengalurus-bus-system-intelligence-failure/

Is Bengaluru’s bus system an intelligence failure?Darryl D'Monte
<http://indiaclimatedialogue.net/author/darryl-dmonte/>,  27.09.17






*Although Bengaluru’s Intelligent Transport System for buses has been
nominated for the prestigious C40 Cities award for sustainable
transportation, the reality on the ground leaves much to be desired*
[image: An electric bus operated by Bangalore Metropolitan Transport
Corporation (Photo by Ramesh NG)]

An electric bus operated by Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation
(Photo by Ramesh NG)

Somewhat surprisingly, Bengaluru’s Intelligent Transport System (ITS
<http://urbantransport.kar.gov.in/its.html>) for buses — the first of its
kind in India — has been shortlisted with four other cities worldwide in
the sustainable transportation category by the C40 Cities Bloomberg
Philanthropies Awards <http://www.c40.org/awards> in New York for
climate-related initiatives.

The city has been proverbially bogged down by traffic snarls and lack of
public transport, including taxis and auto rickshaws, and there have been
few visible signs of an improvement in the situation.

Nagendra, chief systems manager in the Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport
Corporation (BMTC), said work on the project had started in 2015 and
was officially
launched
<http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/bengaluru-bmtc-flags-off-intelligent-transport-system-in-low-key-manner/articleshow/52435156.cms>
in
May 2016.

Shiva Subramaniam, a Directorate of Urban Land Transport (DULT) planner
working on an ITS master plan with the Japanese International Cooperation
Agency for Bengaluru and Mysore, disagrees. “Nothing officially has started
as of now,” he told indiaclimatedialogue.net
<http://indiaclimatedialogue.net/2017/09/27/bengalurus-bus-system-intelligence-failure/indiaclimatedialogue.net>
*.*

C40 is a network of the world’s megacities committed to addressing climate
change. In all, 25 cities across the world are competing for the C40 awards
for four other categories — building energy efficiency and clean energy;
reducing waste; climate action plans; and adaptation plans and programmes.

The organisers stress the role of big cities with over 5 million people in
tackling climate change. “Nearly half of the finalist projects are in
American cities, and they will help ensure that the US reaches our Paris
Agreement goal, no matter what happens in Washington,” UN Special Envoy for
Cities and Climate Change and C40 Board President, Michael R. Bloomberg,
the billionaire and philanthropist former Mayor of New York for 13 years, said
in a statement
<http://www.c40.org/press_releases/c40-awards-2017-press-release>. “Cities
are leading the way on every continent, and the C40 Awards are a chance to
highlight great ideas and help them spread.”

*First initiative*

For the Bengaluru ITS, the citation notes that as the first such initiative
in India, it faced “a massive institutional change with no direct examples
to point to required that the programme be clear, comprehensive, and
targeted at a wide range of audiences. Gaining public approval was a
central challenge for this programme, especially given that the BMTC (Bangalore
Metropolitan Transport Corporation <https://www.mybmtc.com/en/bus_stations>)
is made up of 36,000 employees who are all directly impacted by the
project.”

“A key intervention by cities is to make public transport more attractive
and easier to use, thereby decreasing the number of times an individual
chooses to travel by car,” Simon Kjaer Hansen, C40 Director of Regions in
Copenhagen, told indiaclimatedialogue.net
<http://indiaclimatedialogue.net/2017/09/27/bengalurus-bus-system-intelligence-failure/indiaclimatedialogue.net>.
“An ITS system which integrates buses and creates a more certain,
streamlined service improves the incentives for citizens to use public
transport.”

BMTC says that GPS-based Vehicle Tracking Units have been installed in
6,400 buses. This provides real-time tracking and monitoring of buses,
collection of operational data and generation of Management Information
System (MIS) reports and two-way voice communication between the bus and
the control centre. The mobile app shows the estimated time of arrival for
over 6,000 buses in real time, which encourages more people to use this
energy-efficient mode of public transport.

*Looks good in theory*

In theory, this makes a world of difference to a bus service, since
commuters know when a bus will arrive and how long it will take to reach
its destination. Due to congestion on the roads caused by four- and
two-wheelers, buses are delayed indefinitely, which prompts commuters to
switch to Metros, taxi aggregators and auto-rickshaws, the last two of
which only add to traffic jams and consume fossil fuels. Switching to buses
will reduce emissions otherwise generated by cars, two-wheelers and
rickshaws.

However, few are even aware that such an IT-enabled system exists in
Bengaluru, which is known as India’s Silicon Valley. Many activists are
highly critical of the project. Muralidhar Rao, who blogs on *praja.in
<http://praja.in>*, said: “It has been launched eight times and is not
functioning after having spent so much money.”

“There is no accountability on how the INR 700 million (USD 10.7 million)
budget has been spent,” Sridhar Pabbisetty, CEO of Namma Bengaluru
Foundation, a local non-profit, told indiaclimatedialogue.net
<http://indiaclimatedialogue.net/2017/09/27/bengalurus-bus-system-intelligence-failure/indiaclimatedialogue.net>.
“If you to the (Google) Play store, you will find three or four BMTC apps
for tracking the movement of buses.”

“With Application Programming Interface (API) technology, BMTC is in a
position to share data like the location of a bus online and enable a
commuter to adopt this technology. This isn’t proprietary data but not
being made public, so ITS remains an enigma,” Pabbisetty said. “As someone
in touch with citizens’ movements and a public transport user, I have tried
to install the app, which takes 10 minutes, and is an ‘almost there, never
there’ technology.”

*Many challenges*

Ekroop Caur, former Managing Director of BMTC who has since been
transferred, confirmed that ITS had faced a lot of challenges not just
externally but also internally. She cited that the project had met a “lot
of resistance from within the organisation.”

ITS relies on electronic data and is widely used in the developed world.
Bengaluru is an obvious choice because it is home to thousands of techies.
There are three major components: a Vehicle Tracking System, a Passenger
Information System, and an Electronic Ticketing System. The BMTC has
distributed over 10,000 electronic ticketing machines, fixed 6,400+ vehicle
tracking units, and installed a new Command and Control Centre.

“The bus system is more predictable, user-friendly, and streamlined,” says
the C40 citation. “Moving toward CO2 reduction, the BMTC is looking to
transition to a fleet of entirely electric buses…it has a fleet of around
6,400 buses clocking 858,000 miles every day. At this capacity, the system
reduces total CO2 emissions by 154.8 tonnes per day and annual emissions
associated with the fleet by 56,670 tonnes.”

The organisers believe that the ITS can be replicated elsewhere in India.
It reduces fuel costs even as ridership increases. By making buses more
easily accessible, the BMTC “has the potential to change the culture of
public transportation in Bangalore,” the citation says.

*Fixing poor connectivity*

However, Rao holds BMTC’s technical advisers, who include foreign and
Indian companies and agencies, responsible for the non-functioning of
Bengaluru’s ITS. When S.M. Krishna was Chief Minister of Karnataka, he
drafted Rao as co-chair of a Commuter Comfort Task Force. “Comfort wasn’t
the issue, poor connectivity was,” he told indiaclimatedialgue.net
<http://indiaclimatedialogue.net/2017/09/27/bengalurus-bus-system-intelligence-failure/indiaclimatedialgue.net>.
“There are 3,000 routes which can be reduced to 33 —north, south, east,
west and diagonally. It was only partially adopted.”

In 2007, he helped BMTC start the YI (Kannada for *Yelli Iddira*, or Where
are you?) service, which would send a text message for the location of a
bus, but it proved short-lived. Before the launch of the ITS last May, he
blogged: “BMTC, now on the threshold of launching its ITS, could have
perfected the same model for its buses 10 years ago. It discontinued a
similar, but SMS-based, bus-tracking service called YI.”

“The service would have cost BMTC a few lakhs of rupees. Years after YI was
dumped, a tie-up was in the offing for a similar project, but at an
estimated cost of INR 69 crore (INR 690 million). This too did not
materialise. The ITS project now being prepared for a launch costs even
more. Couldn’t this cost escalation have been avoided had the transport
corporation continued and upgraded YI?”

Subsequently, the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation, deciding that
YI was not good enough, spent something like INR 150 million to put
together its ITS in Mysore. It hasn’t been talked about as a model to
follow even by BMTC, which tied up with Trimax IT Infrastructure & Services
Ltd in Mumbai for the deal worth INR 690 million. The cost has gone up to
INR 790 million over five years and Rao says, “We don’t know where it’ll
end ultimately, if it’ll end at all.”

*Nuanced view*

However, Ashwin Mahesh, CEO of Mapunity, a social technology company and
close informal advisor to BMTC, takes a more nuanced view “almost as an
insider”. “ITS wasn’t conceived of very strongly till some four years ago.
It very much depends on people at the helm, who get transferred,” he told
indiaclimatedialogue.net
<http://indiaclimatedialogue.net/2017/09/27/bengalurus-bus-system-intelligence-failure/indiaclimatedialogue.net>.
“What ITS has achieved is to track each bus and traveller by destination
and what each passenger is doing. Once ITS is digitised, it makes it harder
for operators to cheat. It has forced departments to go digital and this
can tell the undertaking which routes to ply on. It has forced compliance
and depot staff is incentivised with a share of revenue for efficiency.” He
believes that ITS will not benefit people as much as a reform of the bus
system.

More than ITS, the Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS), or reserved lanes for
buses on arterial roads, could prove that buses are the cheapest and most
energy-efficient mode of urban transport. Before the ill-fated first such
system was introduced in Delhi in 2009, its mentors in Indian Institute of
Technology Delhi (IIT-D <http://www.iitd.ac.in/>) reported that an
estimated 60% of motorised commuting trips were made by mass transit, the
majority being by bus. But buses represented less than 1% of the total
motorised vehicles and cars and two-wheelers represented 90%. According to
the UN Environment Programme, a Metro costs INR 1.5 billion to build each
km, a BRTS costs only INR 100 million a km.

With the current emphasis on smart cities, the demand for ITS is expected
to grow. A Google search reveals 2.8 million entries. There have been
several reports on its application in India by multilateral, foreign and
Indian agencies and institutions like IITs. Global giants like IBM and
CISCO are the main players for smart cities, with many other agencies in
tow.