Are you all set for a Bus Yatra of Bengaluru? We will be hosting an exciting event complete with a panel discussion and launch of our report – “Bustling Through Bengaluru” – onboard a moving BMTC bus on October 14, 2022. The #BussuNammaBossu event will celebrate the bus users of the city with the aim of building greater consensus to prioritise public transport—especially buses—in India’s cities. This Bus Yatra will take you on a journey across the IT city to listen to stories from passengers, discuss important issues around public transport usage and experience the joy of travelling on a bus.
The event aims to reimagine the role of the ‘Public Bus’ in building sustainable, inclusive cities. A distinguished panel comprising voices in the mobility space including government bodies, civil society organisations, and members of the public, especially vulnerable communities, will also deliberate over the need to build better public transport networks to fight congestion, air pollution and climate change.
Shaheen Shasa, co-founder of Bengaluru Bus Prayanikara Vedike, who will be one of the panellists onboard the bus, says, “For me, equity is first and foremost for true ‘development’. Does everyone in the city have dignified work and access to basic amenities like transport, healthcare, education? Does everyone have access to public spaces? Who gets a say when a city is shaped; is everyone heard? We need to reduce disparities if we want to continue being a democratic society. When we keep people at the centre of our decisions, it will make the whole system stronger, efficient, sustainable and accessible.”
Out of nearly one crore vehicles in Bengaluru, BMTC’s fleet of 6700 buses constitutes less than one percent as opposed to private vehicles such as two-wheelers and four-wheelers that occupy nearly 89 percent of the vehicular composition. The accelerated economic growth has also seen a consistent and corresponding spike in population growth rate. However, despite the growth in population, the daily passenger trips on board the BMTC have reduced drastically over the years – from 51 lakhs in 2014-15 to 33 lakhs in 2019-20. The change in figures clearly highlights the need to prioritise bus transport networks to cater to the growing population in a bid to build cities that transport people and not vehicles.
“Traditional engineering based interventions i.e. keep supplying road infrastructure capacity to accommodate exponentially growing number of personal mobility vehicles, has proved un-sustainable and has only led to more traffic jams. That is why we need to have a relook at city infrastructure in terms of which modes and their infrastructure needs promotion and push” , says Dr Ashish Verma, Convernor, IISc Sustainable Transportation Lab, who will also be a panellist on board the bus.
There have been positive changes in recent years with the BMTC incorporating innovative ideas to improve the city’s bus infrastructure like increasing the fleet of electric buses and creating Bus Priority Lanes along the busy Outer Ring Road in 2019. However, a lot more needs to be done to accelerate a socially-just transition towards sustainability. “Bustling Through Bengaluru”, the latest Greenpeace report, is an effort in this direction as it talks about these challenges and solutions from the perspective of the bus user.
In the age of climate change, we need to encourage community spaces that share available resources—and public transport is one such communal space which is an absolute necessity in this fight against climate change. A Bengaluru that prioritises walking, cycling and public transport is a city geared towards the cause of sustainability and equity. So join us live through our YouTube channel where we will stream this discussion LIVE on October 14th. So, save the date!