Today I was delighted that my favorite cartoon character returns with a big bang.
I especially remember his drama of criticizing BJP the day he joined hands with them to form the government. (a great way to strengthen the new ties) Then every time his ministry failed he blamed it on the previous government, forgetting that he was very much a part of it. Now today he announces the deal of 1,000 Volvo busses.
Let me throw in some facts.
1) BMTC (Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation) has a total fleet of 4,000 busses. It neither has the financial resources, nor manpower and parking berths for 1,000 regular and 1,000 Volvo additonal busses.
2) Volvo officials simply jumped with joy when BMTC introduced their busses on just 3 routes. They felt they could enter into a whole new market of city transport if they make this deal. Now today, when Bangalore itself is planning to buy 1000 of its busses, why are they so silent? I hope the ministry did communicate with Volvo that they are buying 1,000 of their busses (a deal of 5,000 million rupees). Not to mention that will prompt many other cities to evaluate introduction of Volvo services.
3) If I am not wrong only a month ago the same ministry announced that by June 2008 we will have a metro. What are you going to do with this bloated fleet of 6,000 busses then?
Volvo busses have been very successful and are very comfortable. Bangalore needs to solve its traffic problem real soon, but that does not mean that to gain some PR points you mislead the public. Adding 100 new busses is logical, one can even define a timeline for that, but 2,000 busses… please give me a break.
4 replies on “1,000 Volvo busses for BMTC”
Following is the survey –
Floating population – 2000 / Day
Settling population – 500 / Day
Monthly – 15000
Yearly – 1.6 L people
As per this, bangalore need of new houses PA is around 1 lakh. Bangalore is no supplying 1 lakh houses as the basic needs of settlers from other regions.
City is increasing by 1 km every week. Metro rail starting from byappanahali to basavanagudi is not enough. The metro should start at the border of the bangalore district and not inside bangalore. This will help all settlers in bangalore to afford and buy properties in bangalore. BMTC plan to introduce more buses will definitely a big advantage for future bangalore growth. Keep it up BMTC kudos and all the best in IPO.
@Lakshith
Thanks for the info… i know how badly Bangalore needs public transport (both bus and metro) but in this post I was trying to point out that sometimes (no always) Kumaraswami thinks that Bangalore public is stupid.. he promises things which nobody can deliver….
BTW government has just announced housing plans for 1.76 Lakh houses… but with state assembly elections just 3 months away… i can only hope that this dream comes true http://www.hindu.com/2007/09/05/stories/2007090550310100.htm
didn’t have great luck searching this. holpfuley this improves further. huge potential to be useful. what next? telling how crowded the bus is so that you can take the next bus?
haaha.. that would be great… there are already a lot of navigation apps that tell u which road is crowded… i wonder if people could come up with an app that warns you that this bus/metro is crowded