Straphangers United

Transport Minister K.N.Nehru has been speaking about the DMK Government being concerned about the inflationary impact of higher bus fares (report in The Hindu here). This is a case of shedding crocodile tears for the Chennai commuter, who is already at the receiving end of the DMK regime’s backdoor increase of fares under the guise of deluxe, Express, M series and Volvo buses with no substantial increase in operating efficiency, service levels or ticketing reform.

Mr. Nehru has apparently not done much reading of late. The country’s first fully planned bus system in the city of Indore has deluxe buses that are operating on a much more scientific system than available at the MTC. They are also a lot cheaper.

There is greater transparency on the part of the Indore Bus Company, and a far more modern system. For the benefit of those who are making us feel guilty about paying Rs. 7 to Rs. 15 in so-called non-airconditioned deluxe MTC buses, we would like to reproduce here, the fares advertised by the Indore service provider on its website:

(Accounting for minor deviations) ICTSL has finalized following fare structure:

Upto 3 K.M. fare Rs. 3.00
Upto 7 K.M. fare Rs. 5.00
Upto 10 K.M. fare Rs. 7.00
Upto 13 K.M. fare Rs. 10.00
Upto 16 K.M. fare Rs. 12.00

Source: Citybus Indore

 At least now, Mr. Nehru and his party must stop telling the Chennai travelling public that it is doing it a favour. He should instead be flushing out the MTC of those corrupt elements who are responsible for the corporation running grimy, rickety, run-down, overloaded and dirty buses at unconscionably higher fares. We can only emphasise the need for the Manmohan Singh government to refuse any more concessions to the MTC, which has been notorious for continuing with its opaque ways.

See in this video, the quality of bus travel a few days after the 10 per cent petrol price hike in Chennai, reflecting the interest of the DMK Government in improving the service.

We would also like to reproduce here, the features of the Indore bus as provided on the Citybus Indore website:

It is a unusual, but Transport Minister K.N.Nehru has flagged off a fleet of autorickshaws that are distinctively coloured, carry markings to indicate that they are “tourist-friendly,” and the drivers even speak some English. But more important, they promise to abide by fare rules, which is something of a wonder in Dravidianland.

The funny part is that Sun News today quoted the Minister as stating that these autorickshaws had given an undertaking that they would ply by meter. This is a Ministerial admission of the DMK Government’s inability to ensure meter-based operations for the 99 per cent of Chennai autorickshaws.

The same government, along with others in various states, that opposes a petrol price hike. But even with controlled petrol price, Mr. Karunanidhi’s government is unable to provide a reliable, rule-based service in Chennai.

We are now told that these autorickshaws alone will run by meter, although that is strange because the problem then is not one of economics, but some extraneous factor.

Could it be that most of the autorickshaw owners are bold enough to defy the law, because they have someone to support them?

Or is the DMK Government subsidising these “tourist-friendly” autorickshaws?

Will Mr. Nehru please enlighten the travelling public of Chennai?

We welcome the editorial in Business Standard on the BRT system under implementation in Delhi. It provides the correct and sound analysis on the strong fundamentals of the public transport initiative, and advocates a culture change for car-loving citizens among Delhiites. The picture tells the story about what the situation in New Delhi is today.

Business Standard says in its editorial “Get BRT right“,

“Since Indian cities are exploding with poor people coming in from the countryside to earn more, an efficient public transport system has to come first. Those better off will want and should be free to own a car, but what is not practical is for most people to drive a car to work every day. Very few do so in Mumbai, London or New York. Delhi’s middle class should learn to think differently, and the BRT has to be made to work properly. “

The message to the middle class is particularly relevant and is universally applicable in Indian cities. We support this view wholeheartedly and commend it to Chennaiites. We also recommend this video of the Transmilenio BRT system in Bogota, Colombia.

 Transportation expert and sustainability (SUSTRAN) campaigner Paul Barter (whom the editor of this blog met in Kuala Lumpur several years ago in the company of researcher Dr. Yeoh Seng Guan) has this very relevant post on the Delhi BRT.

The New York Times reports today that in the land of the automobile, public transport is now sought by a growing number of people due to rising ‘gas’ prices. We must note this development with satisfaction, and the NYT report quantifies the shift in various cities, ranging from five per cent to over 15 per cent, particularly in traditionally car-bound States.

There is a lesson in the American experience for car-happy Indians. If anyone thought that the present regime of artificially low fuel prices will last forever, they are living in the proverbial fool’s paradise; their daydream is being perpetuated thanks to political parties that have little environmental sense. The era of cheap fuel is well and truly over as evidenced in the spiking retail prices of fuel in the US, a country where cheap ’gas’ has always been taken for granted (barring the 1973 Arab oil embargo).

We reiterate that this is the time for the political leadership in India to show sufficient foresight and compel state governments to invest heavily in public transit systems in cities and towns of all sizes. The American experience shows that such investments are best made when the economy is riding a high, rather than when it is recession-bound: there is insufficient tax support now in the US, when local governments would like to invest in public transport systems, and when demand is rising, because the tax realisation is reduced. In short, the best time to win converts to comfortable public transit systems from personal automobiles in India is now.

Sadly, the Chennai experience shows that an outmoded management framework governs our public transit initiatives. There is no regulatory or oversight authority, the monopoly bus operator is keen to raise more revenues through fare hikes, without a parallel and comparable investment in augmentation of fleets, services, crew competence, ticketing modernisation and comfort. Train systems run by regional Railways, like Southern Railway, are outmoded, uncomfortable with colonial era stations remaining completely hostile to passengers.

It is a shame that someone wanting to ride transit in Chennai cannot yet buy a day pass, a weekly or monthly pass with ease, when similar pay-as-you-go online facilities are made possible for mobile phone subscriptions, direct-to-home television and bank accounts. The Metropolitan Transport Corporation insists that people should queue up at virtually a handful of centres for a city of 6 million people, and buy their passes on designated days of the month. This is the worst monopolistic and outmoded method of ticketing one can imagine, and completely at odds with the culture of efficiency that people look for in a growing country. We have already stated that the MTC’s strategy of running air-conditioned Volvo services is deeply flawed, unproductive and negative in its impact.

We would like to emphasise again that the Union Urban Development Ministry headed by Minister Jaipal Reddy and other international agencies such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank suspend all urban development and transport grants and loans to the Tamil Nadu Government, until it begins implementing reforms to public transport immediately.

To jaded Indians, many of whom see people getting killed, maimed or simply terrorised by vehicles on the roads frequently, the common traffic signal is only a device holding marginal interest.

The world over, a traffic light is what keeps the automobile and the non-motorised road users from becoming involved in a fatal encounter. In fact, the history of the traffic light is itself traceable to Garrett Morgan a black inventor who reportedly came up with the device after watching the horrifying outcome of an accident, and then sold it to General Electric in 1923.

None of the horror that overcame Morgan will affect Indians, though, who routinely ignore traffic signals and treat it as nothing more than a nuisance and safety as something that is predetermined by the Almighty. In fact, management expert S.Raghunathan even uses the traffic lights analogy for a game theory analysis in his book “Games Indians Play” on why Indians are born losers — they just cannot see the benefits of cooperation; to them, beating the other man to it is what constitutes intelligence. The result is there for all of us to see each day, in the form of dead and injured people, battered and dented cars, mangled bicycles and a losing insurance business.

That preamble is only to draw attention to the Chennai City Traffic Police move, announced through The Hindu today, to operate traffic lights not just during the day, but also at night on select roads (story is here). The idea is that the roads are particularly dangerous at night and a lot of serious accidents take place during the midnight to dawn hours.

That is excellent intent, but the record of our CCTP with respect to enforcement (in terms of vehicular traffic and obstructions caused by civic agencies, shops and other commerce) leave us all a little dismayed. For one thing, the police are improving what is already above average by domestic standards: Anna Salai, EVR Periyar Salai, Kamarajar Salai, ECR, OMR and so on. It is easy to enforce traffic here, simply with the help of a few constables who can use digital still cameras to photograph offenders, punch big holes in driving licences and if necessary, lock up those drivers who are murderous.

The problem is much worse in some pockets, where people are pitted against vehicles with nary a foot of space to walk on the road margins. I come back to the point of how the prosperous police (who collected, officially, Rs.10 crores in fines in 2007) needs to look at building pedestrian facilities – sidewalks or footpaths and subways across roads at a distance of 100 metres on all important city roads.

The idea of using mobile cameras fitted to jeeps is not new. The Institute for Road Traffic Education in Delhi started the practice way back in the early 1990s. They offered the know-how to Chennai Traffic Police when Mr. Sekar, IPS was the Deputy Commissioner of Traffic. For some strange reason, or perhaps not so strange reason, the Police shooed the IRTE away. Cameras are a damn nuisance because they might end up recording a lot of evidence, and if someone demands that the tape be produced in Court, particularly with reference to VIPs, it might cause huge embarrassments.

Of course, these are not the unkind questions that our media will ask our IPS officers. The media may not even be aware, for instance, how cameras are actually used. Will they record continuously? Or will there be time-lapse videography that enables recording of important information but not continuously? Can the tapes be asked for under the Right to Information Act? After all, they are only records of public roads and events for everyone to see.

It would also be interesting to see what the motor vehicle insurers make of all this. It is technically feasible, for instance, for insurers to look at the tapes and hike the premiums for the rotten drivers. That would put the fear of God in the minds of our lawless Indica taxi drivers serving our IT moguls, of VIP and political trash who think they own the road and our muscular MTC drivers whose driving habits are insured by trade unions.

Interestingly, the Police said in March 2008 in The Hindu (that report is here) that they will be putting up 80 new surveillance cameras for traffic, and that some old ones are already working for some time (we have not seen the results of this, though). This is the same story as the pedestrian actuated traffic light, for people to cross. They tried one, just one, on Kamarajar Salai in the late nineties. Can anyone tell me where it is?

That was the question posed on the discussion forum of one of the bigger newspapers in the country, which also publishes from Chennai.

We posted the following response on the forum:

With the right set of circumstances, most people would opt not to use their cars often. The magic that will get people off their cars and on to buses, trains, cycles and even get them walking is integration.
I should be able to walk in safety (read good footpaths) to a bus, switch at will to a train, and be assured of some level of comfort and above all, safety and reliability in public transport. Affordable costs is another aspect.

 
There is a lot of public health literature that points out that a mix of walking and use of public transport gives you the right amount of exercise and saves the atmosphere from avoidable pollution, not to speak of global warming gases. Why invest in treadmills when you can take in wonderful sights and walk/ride to work and back?

 
For an ambitious people with grand notions about their global stature, Indians have historically given themselves the worst public transport systems, with few modern exceptions. Abusive transport staff put off many people; rickety trains and buses (contrast with air-conditioned small cars for the middle class), and outmoded ticketing systems make life hell.

Above all, our ‘babus’ and ‘netas’ think public transport is meant only for the poor. Their own travel is with police clearing the way or using red lights on cars. With a resounding kick to that anti-democratic ideology, we will all be better off. All of us can still use our cars when the situation requires it — we may just have to pay something extra for the privilege.