BMTC bus strike and underlying lessons

The recent strike of the transport corporations’ employees in the city has raised new questions regarding the state of public transport in the city and has drawn attention to the fact that if BMTC buses came to a stop, Bangaloreans have no other option but to use private transport.

About 43 lakh commuters were stranded when 6,200 BMTC buses stayed off the roads. Commuters had to depend on their friends and Tempo Travellers, which picked people from bus stops and dropped them at fixed locations. Then, of course, you have the autorickshaws.The experience taught us a number of lessons, say experts. The first lesson is that there is no alternative to public transport. “There were more vehicles on the roads. Traveling took longer and roads were much more congested,” said V Ravichandar, civic expert. He added that the dependency on public transport should not allow it to hold us to ransom.

“The strike is a case for corporatisation of the BMTC's services. There has to be lesser government interference and more professionalism in functioning. The BMTC has won awards for its price fixation and management. The lesser the government interference, the better. When it comes to employees, politicians should not be allowed to fix posts for employees,” he said.While some experts suggest breaking the monopoly of BMTC in the public transport domain by brining in private players, others say that this is not the only solution. For instance, all the bus operators could decide to go on strike on the same day. According to Ashwin Mahesh, member ABIDe, considering that BMTC enjoys monopoly, its threshold should be much higher.

“The BMTC enjoys monopoly and thus the expectations are higher and the threshold for striking work has to be very high because a lot of people are dependent on the services and there are no alternatives,” he said.

He added that the solution is not necessarily in multiple service providers or in breaking monopoly but in working on the leadership. “We have to increase the standards of working drastically,” he said. Having multiple modes of transport is also important, said Muralidhar Rao of Praja RAAG.

“This is the reason we have been pushing commuter rail. In two years, you could have 400 kms of network connecting Bangalore with major points outside the city,” he said. However, commuter rail or Metro cannot be a substitute for BMTC. Another need is to have shared services for the last-mile connectivity. “We need a much larger number of taxis and auto services, especially shared autos. These work well in other cities and people like it. It is cheap and provides the much-needed last mile connectivity. During strikes, they can also be allowed to go long distances,” said Mahesh.