Let's elevate ourselves, find solution to transport problem

Bengaluru represents the unmatched success story of entrepreneurial and industrial prowess of the country. Its IT industry accounts for 35% of India’s $118 Billion IT/ITes exports and employs over 10 lakh people. The city is also home to biotech, aerospace, defence, machine tool and garment industries. With 1.3 crore population, which is expected to cross two crore by 2030, it is the fastest-growing mega city in the world.  Because of this unprecedented growth and poor infrastructure, mobility has become the ‘Bane of Bengaluru’ with unending traffic jams, which have led to a huge loss in productivity and increase in pollution. In the process, “Brand Bengaluru” has suffered. 

For a city of this size, efficient mobility demands 70-75% share of public transport, but currently it is less than 50%, of which BMTC contributes 90%, carrying 50 lakh people per day. Metro Rail carries around 4 lakh people per day.
By 2030, with Phase 3 or even Phase 4 of Metro and suburban rail operational, the two will have the carrying capacity of only 40-50 lakh people per day, even less than what BMTC carries today. This means, BMTC will continue to be the main public transport carrier which will need to carry 1.2-1.3 crore people per day in 2030 if the city has to move. That will require BMTC to run at least 20,000 buses, which is a three-fold increase from its current fleet of 6,500 buses. 

People will give up the comfort and convenience of their own vehicles if they can move faster in a public transport system. But today, BMTC’s average peak hour speed is only 8-10 kmph. Since buses move slow and are difficult to reach, people use private vehicles, which make buses move even slower, resulting in gridlocks that we witness on Bengaluru’s roads every day. It is indeed a “Catch-22” situation.  How do we make public transport a viable option by making it easily accessible and making it move faster? 

Given that we have just 1,500 km of bus-worthy arterial and sub-arterial road network, which we cannot widen being a fully developed city, the only viable option is to go vertical and develop road-over-road. We should shift goods transport traffic to elevated section, while providing dedicated bus lanes on roads below with good quality footpaths/cycle lanes to ensure that buses are easily accessible and move faster. “Elevated Corridors” above with “Dedicated Bus Lanes” below will actually facilitate greater adoption of public transport, contrary to the fears of some.

The author is the Founder Director of Centre for Smart Cities