Technology for improved Public Bus Transport

Today, people are not sure about the options, if any, in many cases, they really have in public transport. They would rather pick the mobile and book cabs and that is where they have a choice to choose their mode of transport. Today that provision does not exist for public transport and that exactly is what technology can offer. Our recommendations to the Pune Municipal Corporation included providing information through user friendly maps, time-tables consistent travel information.

Again creating a branding is something we miss; every transport mode is a brand now. TFL in London spends a huge amount in branding to retain its brand entity across all modes whether it is taxi, tube, rail, metro or river boat services. Here, in case of Pune, we have PMPML, PMC, Pune Smart City Corporation and PCMC. There is hardly any consistency from one mode to another; people do not perceive it as single solution. It is just bits of investment peppered around and that is just not attractive enough for the young generation of this country that wants single answer on phone.

Using technology to enhance the Bus & BRT systems will have significant impacts on the number of persons being carried. A key impediment of bus transport is the intersection delay due to external traffic conditions. Signal priority systems help minimise the effect of the intersection delay.

– Dhawal Ashar

Our recommendations included actions for off-line bus maps and a consistent database to support external API which can be used to develop information apps that are very easy to be built and do not require much investment. Investment is required in creating and maintaining this consistent database. On longer term, it goes beyond technology, you need to create a nice, safe and comfortable ambience at bus stations where people actually can sit and relax rather than worry about the next bus. So, the further investment should be done on improving the physical bus-stop infrastructure. These are the areas where we have been helping authorities.

Dhawal Ashar: There are very good solutions that you offer like creating passenger information system but do you think technology also has a role to play in offering the services that you can use for driver management like in-vehicle monitoring system that helps to measure or monitor driver’s performance that in turn can affect the maintenance, and driver performance in general? What are the transit priority solutions and how important are those for increasing ridership?

Kohli: The buses have monitoring system that can give information on speed, breakages, acceleration or whether the bus halts at the stop or it is skipped. This is clearly operational-management role but I feel, it is more of internal exercise which the public authority has to do.

Nicolas Morael: Managing transport technologies is the easiest part, however, the most important part is what you are going to do with these technologies. The purpose of this technology is to give accurate information or data to people. So, if you want people to move away from their car to the public transport, the first step is to give them accurate information.

Yashas Bhargav: My experience goes back two years when I started working with KSRTC and BMTC. There is technology but it is there to monitor but you need to ensure that your operations are planned before you deploy technology to monitor your operations. It is impossible to plan the operations accurately but we as a solution provider are here to provide planning and scheduling tool for the crew and the vehicles. There are a lot of challenges when we do planning like when the STU’s staff members do not accept the software easily. The STUs and even the staff expect the software to do the entire job or they feel it is of no use. So, the entry level platform which we look into any STUs is where the challenge lies and that is what we face as a part of the project.

WRI did consulting work for MCT (Mysuru City Transport) which is a sister corporation of KSRTC. Luckily, it was a world-bank project and that’s why we were able to finish the project. Capacity building is something which we have tried to work on. We have tried to implement various solutions and tasks which were given to us as a part of scope and to impart knowledge to STUs so that they continue to deliver and implement these tasks. It was a task for us to ask the STUs to set up a team to actually implement the project that was the additional scope of work.