He also had a word of advice for car owners. Buy new vehicles, but keep them at home. Use it for inter-city travel and use public transport inside the city.
If you don’t have a garage, do not buy a car. That’s what principal secretary (transport), Shankar Linge Gowda suggested as one of the measures to discourage aspiring car owners from using the public space for parking. He also had a word of advice for car owners. Buy new vehicles, but keep them at home. Use it for inter-city travel and use public transport inside the city.
“Can we have a no-car day like bus day?” he asked. “Not registering new cars is difficult because we earn money from it,” he said at the Nobel Memorial Seminar on ‘Making Public Transport the First Choice’ in the city on Tuesday.
Going forward towards providing last mile connectivity to the Metro traveller, Gowda told Volvo, the organiser of the event, that the department would be interested in buying small luxury buses, like the ones he had seen in Mexico. The department would also consider introducing small buses for the luxury traveller, he said in response to a suggestion from one of the members in the audience.
By 2015, the BMTC would add 4,000 more buses to its existing fleet of 6,000, said Syed Zameer Pasha, managing director, BMTC. “In the last two years, we have added 2,000 new buses. The greater challenge now is sustainability, also in terms of the environment, design and technology,” he said.
Reply to a query as to why the government does not invite private transport companies to compete in the sector, Gowda explained that it would be difficult to regulate them. “It has been proven in several cities that government regulated transport alone works well. Private operators offer good service along with accidents. Safety of the passenger is not a concern for them,” he claimed.
A combination of incentives and disincentives, prodding and intervention from the government is necessary for getting more acceptance for public transport, he said. The target now would be to take the number of those using buses from four million to five million, he added.
Initiatives like introducing the common mobility card, which he intends to do before December would further the cause, he said.
The other needs are a ‘park-and-drive’ facility which would ensure vehicles’ safety. Bangalore is also in dire need of a bus rapid transit system as well as more information on bus routes.
Aroon Raman, chairman CII, Karnataka said there should be more destination centric solutions.
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