BMTC wants to reserve its spot in the tech age

By Gururaj B R

In a bid to regain passengers, corporation wants to introduce seat reservation

Picture this: You have to board a BMTC bus in a bit, you are at home and you log on to a website and book a seat for yourself. When the bus arrives at the bus stop, you enter and occupy the reserved seat, even when the bus is thickly packed. Though the idea of reserving a seat for a BMTC bus sounds futuristic, the city transport corporation is seriously thinking of ways to introduce this facility soon.

This is said to be one of the novel ideas that the cash-strapped BMTC has come up with in its effort to bring back its commuters as a steady stream of them shift to either cabs or Metro. However, transport experts suggest the corporation takes feedback from the public before jumping into such a new process.

A senior official of BMTC told Bangalore Mirror the corporation has been incurring huge losses over the years. “To overcome the loss, the city transport utility is taking up several measures and seat reservation online is another such measure being contemplated by the corporation to bring back the lost passengers,” he said.

The official said seat reservation plan is still in a nascent stage. There are some issues that need to be sorted out. “KSRTC has a software already for booking seats and we will take it from them. Operating buses during real-time is a challenge for the corporation. The system will first be implemented in Volvo buses on an experimental basis.

The utility will take a decision on expanding the same on the basis of the success,” he explained.

Appreciating the BMTC for getting its tech act together, Srinivas Alavilli of Citizens for Bengaluru said that the BMTC should not bar other passengers from getting into buses if some seats are reserved. “Route rationalisation is a must for effective operating of the public transport utility. The corporation should strengthen its Intelligent Transport System (ITS), which has so far been a failure. The passenger should know the time the bus arrives at the stop like Ola and Uber cabs,” he said.

He also pointed to some of the problems with the system. For example, if a bus is coming from Whitefield and a commuter has reserved a seat from Marathahalli to Majestic, will the seat be kept vacant from Whitefield to Marathalli? “Adoption of technology is good, but before implementing a new system, the corporation should hold a survey and get feedback from the people. Traffic is a major stumbling block for BMTC buses from going as fast as cabs. Hence, there is a need set aside a lane for buses on Ring Roads,” he said.

Voices

If the reservation of seats in buses can only been done via smartphones then it is not of much use as usually the elderly, who often take the BMTC bus, cannot use the apps to book seats. I think it is better to keep it as it is instead of complicating things.
Sandeep Kumar
Works at Grant Thornton


The number of people travelling by buses is really high. They always load the bus with a lot of people, so how will this work? And what guarantee is there that after reservation is made, the seats will stay reserved. No, I don’t think it will work.
Rupa AN
Housewife

No. Because most of the people who travel by buses don’t have access to technology. And it is possible that to reserve online, the costs will get higher.
Mathangi Narayan
Student

It is a good initiative. But it would make sense only if there were a fixed and limited number of people entering the buses.
Vijayendranath D Kabadi
Businessman