It is a fact well known to people around me how much I love
public transport. Maybe its the upbringing in Kolkata with a tinge of frugality
or maybe its just environmentalism. But I love taking public transport where
ever I go here at home or abroad or even in place which are almost foreign in
my own country. The best part is I am now getting to work to help improve it in
a state.
While I deal with lot of facts and figures everyday. There
are some instances which go beyond those to highlight the things which many big
data sets fail to high light sometimes. And therefore I am going to limit this
post to just few observations and not burden with facts and figures.
Last evening not so usually I was coming back from AP
Secretariat to my friend’s place in Gachibowli riding the Bus No. 216. Mid
journey I got a window seat even though I have traveled on this route for last
two years, so many times I cannot resist looking out of the window for these
are just few day I have in this city. After being requested by a co-passenger
to pull back the window I pulled it back and was taking out my phone when one
of the two windows almost fell on my head. My quick reflexes did save me from
atleast an minor accident. But it reminded me of the different time I saw
something similar happening before. The one which I remember the most was while
traveling to Tuljapur from Osmanbad (both in Maharashtra) in a MSRTC bus when a
whole seat just came out. Off-course there were plenty of similar instances
where the bus seemed to fall apart anything. I could just have to rely on the
forces beyond to guarantee my safe passage. But the good thing is atleast there
is organised bus services to when very remote habitations in this part of this
world. There are parts of my country not much unknown to me where even this is
nothing short of dream. Yet when we talk of public transport improvement the
first thing in our mind is metro snaking fast through the elevated corridors
high above traffic jams down on the ground. But we so often forget the rickety
buses plying on our roads of cities and villages. While most of them do not
look swanky they provide very important transit service to a large population
of our country. To take figures of recent NSSO survey into account 66% and 62%
of household in rural and urban respectively spend on buses. Yet we continue to
ignore them while we build metros in cities which do not even have basic public
transport to supplement the metros. Thus reducing the efficiency of metros. I
am not advocating for only buses and I am not anti metro. Rather being a rail
fan I would love to cruise along any new shiny piece of railway line. But the
only problem with railways is, it is costly both to build, operate and
maintain. And there have been cases where to break even metros have to charge
fares high enough that it looses economic feasibility for the commuters. In
short a metro corridor costs atleast 10 times more than a BRTS corridor to
construct. So at the price of 10km of metro line our cities can build 100kms of
BRTS lines. Isn’t that great?
It is therefore high time we scratch our heads a little and
just before buying any expensive good in our house we look for its financial
viability, we do the same for these major investments in our cities from our
hard earned money. And ask our policy makers to give quality public transport
which is cost effective and reliable.
To end this journey, I somehow reached my destination before
the rest of the bus could fall apart. But I wonder how long will it take us to
fix this system which is rapidly falling away. Will we as a nation will reach
our next destination of behind a developed urbanized nation riding on these
falling apart tin boxes we call public buses?
P.S. After cajoled by a classmate and juniour for so long,
what I could not was made possible by a falling window. But thank you Prakash
and Devna for pushing me to start writing again, something almost meaningful.
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