BENGALURU: A study by two students of IISc has revealed that BMTC can save hugely if it reduces the distance travelled by its buses from various depots to the starting points of their routes. These are called dead kilometres as they generate no revenue.
The Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) can save 2.7 crore per annum in just one of its divisions by reducing “dead kilometres” in its routes, suggests the study by Raviraj Mulangi, a PhD student of professor T G Sitharam, and Jagadish Mahadikar, a Master’s student at the Department of Civil Engineering at IISc and their colleagues.
The team collected data on the schedules of air-conditioned (AC) buses operated by BMTC. The team learnt that the BMTC has around 39 depots spread over the city’s five divisions. It operates about 15.51 lakh km per day on 1,889 routes and 6,691 schedules, of which 31,893.7 km are “dead km”. The operating cost of this amounted to 40 crore per year, says a press release.
They found that in BMTC’s central division, which operates AC buses, the dead km per day could be reduced from the existing 3,573.9 km to 2,381.9 km, resulting in a saving of 73,904.
“This is the first systematic study on the BMTC network,” Mulangi said.