Technology for improved Public Bus Transport

Disconnect between access to information and actual use of bus, tracking the number of download of apps

Kohli: When we started investigating, to our surprise, we found there were no bus maps in Pune. One of the things that we did was an audit of the information being provided. It has always been a hand-written board which gets painted over by advertisement. Sometimes, the information is on a pole next to the bus stop, sometimes it is underneath the advertisement, sometimes they are not even there. In some cases, we just saw a big yellow poster with bus numbers which said start time, first bus or last bus often written in Marathi. Pune has huge number of people coming in, it is an educational hub, a technology hub. I am not sure how many could read it on the bus stop leave aside even getting it on an app.

However, there are definitely measures being taken where this gap has been identified as an issue and as and when information is produced. The BRT corridor which Pune is investing in has a provider fitting it with ITS equipment which includes all the display systems, bus location monitoring, control center etc.

One of our recommendations was that PMC or PMPML or public sector in general should not be investing in apps. Apps should be a solution provided by software developers who know best how to develop and maintain those apps. PMC should be investing in the underlying data that that goes into that app which is of utmost importance and that data comes from the public sector operations. The app is something which the software world can deliver in no time. Every app serves a different purpose. A bus app for a university is different from a bus app for Hinjewadi which is different from a bus app that goes to a shopping area.

On plan for increasing vehicle utilization

PMC is investing in about 1500 new buses. And as a part of that, the whole process of monitoring those buses in their utilization, in their kilometers run and the passengers that they have, will start becoming available. On the BRT corridors, there is already an ITS system that is being rolled out. On top of it, 1200 non-BRT buses of Pune are getting GPS added which will be integrated to the existing BRT system. That should enable a better usage of the existing fleet.

Methods followed in collecting data and the nature of the data

Bhargav: The project which we did for Mysore had a huge data set; we developed the KPIs, the key performance indicators, and a host of cost & revenue modelling. This kind of data basically is the number of vehicles running on the road, and the age of the fleet. Any STU will know that about ten years is the normal vehicle life with seven lakh kilometers. So the moment they cross this seven lakh kilometers, the buses are scrapped. Unfortunately, this database is not very well maintained with most of the STUs even in the case of MCTD which we saw. You might have data with respect to the crew what is the salary of a crew but until today, I have not known what is the accurate salary of a particular crew. And for example you have data with respect to the cost per kilometer, and the earning. Now the CPKM which is called as the cost per kilometer is basically devised or allocated based on a particular depot but I personally feel that you need to have a particular cost per kilometer for a bus because in India at least for an STU, you do not have one driver driving different buses. The cost per kilometer is allocated to a depot and not to a bus as the costings should be specific to a particular bus and not a route or depot as a whole.