Positive connections: New Bangalore bus services reach suburbs

Zhou_Jia — Wed, 12 Nov 2014 14:32:08 +0000

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Akshay Sharma rises early to travel 35 kilometers (about 22 miles) into the heart of Bangalore, India, to Majestic Bus Station. Although officially named Kempegowda Bus Station in honor of the city’s founder, the station is known to locals like Akshay simply as “Majestic.”

Majestic is the central bus station of Bangalore, the third largest city in India and capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka. It’s home to the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC), the sole public bus transport provider in Bangalore whose fleet carries over 5 million passengers daily. Akshay, a 26-year-old tutor of Hindi, math, and science who works near Majestic, is one of them.

Akshay moved to Bangalore from the State of Uttar Pradesh ten years ago. He lives with his family in Marsur, a suburb south-west of Bangalore. “I would prefer to live somewhere close to work,” he says, “but I cannot afford to live elsewhere, especially closer to the city center.” So Akshay used to transfer between a series of privately operated buses each morning, traveling more than two hours to Majestic and spending over four hours commuting every day.

Since the launch of a new feeder bus line to nearby Chandapura in February 2014, Akshay has found Marsur significantly better connected to the city center. The feeder routes are part of BMTC’s new Bangalore Intracity Grid (BIG) Bus Network, a system of high-frequency, integrated services that is transforming the quality and capacity of Bangalore’s public bus network. EMBARQ India helped conceptualize, plan, and implement the BIG Bus Network through the Mobility and Accessibility Program (MAP), including its innovative “Trunk and Feeder” design. Feeder routes connect towns and villages like Akshay’s to major trunk routes on arterial roads leading into Bangalore.

“I used to have to wait a long time for the direct bus from Marsur to get to work, so instead I would take a tempo or private bus, which was very crowded, to Chandapura. From there finding a seat on a bus going to Majestic was almost impossible. Now I take the Samparka Sarige BIG bus feeder line to Chandapura, which comes every ten minutes. I don’t have to worry about missing a particular bus. From Chandapura there is a [feeder] bus starting every 5-10 minutes. If one bus is crowded I wait for the next and take a seat.”

Tempo buses, privately rented or owned mid-sized buses that provide an unregulated public transport option, are common in Bangalore and throughout India. And while Lonely Planet will tell you that tempos run on fixed routes for fixed fares, in reality that’s not always the case. For Akshay, the implementation of a new bus service that is “easy to understand and reliable,” and which has eliminated his dependence on tempos, has measurably improved his daily commute and quality of life.

"The most important change has been time saving and increased comfort. I don’t have to haggle with the tempo bus operator every morning and if I’m late returning [home], I can be sure that I will get a bus."

"I generally feel more relaxed and less tired after my commute. This has affected my productivity and general well-being in a positive way."

Akshay has now shaved 30-40 minutes off his commute every day, primarily through drastically reduced wait times. He also explains how the BIG Bus Network’s new, simpler numbering system has made public bus service in Bangalore more easily accessible for his relatives, friends, and co-workers. The city’s bus routes were previously “very difficult to understand, especially for new people.” Now that each bus displays its origin and destination, residents can readily discern which bus to get on – an invaluable improvement in suburbs like Masur where economic livelihoods depend on access to downtown Bangalore.

“People around my home are very positive about the BIG Bus Network and my relatives often talk about it. When someone gets a service extended to where they live, they get a sense of pride and happiness. It really feels good to have an effective and reliable bus service.”

Akshay’s only recommendation? More feeder lines to remote areas surrounding Bangalore “so that people can take full benefit of the service.”

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Training for safe results: André Justino helps boost operations and driver morale

admin — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 12:52:41 +0000

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On June 8, 2014, André Justino found himself driving Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and Marcio Lacerda, Mayor of his native Belo Horizonte, on a tour of the city’s new MOVE bus rapid transit (BRT) system. His journey to the honor officially began fourteen years ago, by starting to work for Cidade BH—one of the bus companies operating MOVE—as an intern. But André’s passion for driving has been a lifelong pursuit.

“When I was 5 years old and got on a bus for the first time, I was amazed. After having worked in other fields, I found what I really like: driving—transporting people. The best part of my work is interacting with people. Our customers, our passengers, become like family members.”

Today, André is a Monitor Driver for Cidade BH and one of the company’s leading driving instructors.

André was recently chosen to participate in a road safety training developed by EMBARQ Brasil, the Transportation and Traffic Agency of Belo Horizonte (BHTrans), and FedEx Corporation as part of the EMBARQ-FedEx Mobility and Accessibility Program (MAP). Like the other 114 participants, he is now responsible for training other drivers that work for his company.

While Cidade BH already had standard training programs in place for its drivers that covered topics like defensive driving, economics, legislation, and care for groups with special needs, including the elderly, André says the biggest assets he gained from the MAP training were audiovisual materials focused on safety.

“When I give the training to my colleagues, I primarily highlight safety. I use a lot of the materials given to us in the EMBARQ and FedEx course, especially the videos. Speaking as an instructor in Belo Horizonte, we had such a lack of teaching materials related to public transport before. Now, our drivers are absorbing the safety training better because they’re able to visualize and anticipate situations they are likely to encounter in their daily work. This has helped a lot.”

André was also impressed by the MAP training’s emphasis on the importance of sharing the road with all users—including pedestrians and cyclists. “We must respect the space of others,” he says, and not let traffic turn into a “war for space.”

André passes this lesson on to the drivers he trains for Cidade BH—about 40 so far, who together operate 15 MOVE vehicles—and he believes their work performance is the better for it. By putting themselves in the shoes of the weakest position on the road, those of the pedestrian, drivers internalize the fact that their consideration and responsibility for the safety of others determines the success of the system.

“Too often, drivers only pay attention to safety after a tragedy. We anticipate those situations before they occur through this training—showing what can happen so drivers know before they encounter bad situations. This training values life—both drivers’ lives and the lives of others.”

And the benefits of stronger safety training don’t just improve bus operations.

“The importance of having courses like this is much broader than we realize. After just four hours in the classroom you can see that drivers leave feeling more valued—it’s reflected even in their personal lives. We see that it decreases stress. We see that drivers are more motivated and committed. Their attitudes improve."

As a result, André reports that passengers and the general public are beginning to see drivers in a more positive light—a factor arguably just as important for the success of a BRT as the more traditionally acknowledged improvements in design, technology, time efficiency, and passenger capacity.

MOVE is expected to carry 700,000 passengers in Belo Horizonte every day once fully operational. Thanks to dedicated trainers like André, it’s good to know that more safe drivers than ever before will be behind the wheel.

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A better commute for 700,000 people every day

Mobility and Accessibility Program - traffic safety

Positive connections: New Bangalore bus services reach suburbs

Training for safe results: André Justino helps boost operations and driver morale