BENGALURU: With the temperatures soaring, travelling in BMTC buses has become very inconvenient, especially with the current crunch in availability of BMTC buses and lack of shelters.
The BMTC now carries around 51 lakh passengers every day on 6,418 buses and many more are needed to handle the increasing passenger load.
The demand for buses is especially high in the south and east areas of the City.
The new buses will mainly cater to these two regions, in the north and west. BMTC have placed a request for new buses, taking into account the population growth over the next two years and the need to weed out old buses. Biswajit Mishra, IT head of BMTC said, “We had asked for 3,500 buses but as of now we have definitely not heard from them.”
With public transport failing to meet commuter demands, the number of personal vehicles, especially two wheelers, has shot up, resulting in high pollution levels, which in turn is taking a toll on public health.
A study conducted by Dr Anitha Chinnaswamy, lecturer in Information Systems under the supervision of Prof. Ian Marshall, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, both from Coventry University, UK, reveals that PM 10 exceeded standards across all the 198 wards of the city.
Certain wards exceeding up to 3 times the recommended permissible limit of 6.0µg/m3(CPCB has set the annual standard for PM10 as 60µg/m3 while the WHO recommends it as 20µg/m3), implying that the city’s levels are up to 9 times above the WHO guidelines!
City doctors too opine that there has been a substantial increase in cardiovascular diseases, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart disease, lower respiratory infections and trachea, bronchus, asthma and others.
In 2011, the vehicular population was estimated to be about 3.88 million, but by 2014, the number of registered vehicles was 5.05 million for an estimated population of 8.4 million people.
Of the total number of registered vehicles in Bangalore, 70% are two-wheelers, 15% are cars, 4% account for auto rickshaws and 8% buses, trucks, tempos and vans. In addition, there is no accurate estimate of floating traffic into and out of the city or of the illegal auto rickshaws around the city, points the research.
Dr Ambanna Gowda, consultant general physician at Fortis Hospital explains, “There is no doubt when I say that there is a rise in diseases like allergic bronchitis, bronchial asthma, dry cough, and unexplained chronic cough due to air pollution, which is mainly caused by vehicular pollution.”
“People with heart and lung diseases and people on field work are at high risk. Of late, usage of inhaled medicines too has increased,” he added.
