The BMTC will begin a revamp of its route operations from Monday by introducing the ‘Trunk and Feeder’ system. The corporation is expected to spend over Rs 50 crore on phase 1 of the project, which is the trunk and feeder services along Hosur Road.
Preparation for the change has been going on for months, with the corporation working with EMBARQ, a not-for- profit organisation, conducting surveys to understand the behaviour and pattern of commuters along this route.
The trunk and feeders are an extension of the Bangalore Integrated Grid (BIG) 10 services introduced by BMTC in 2009. “The aim of the integrated service is to ensure that Bangalore residents are connected to any part of the city, with a reasonable frequency of buses, with not more than two change of buses,” explained Anjum Parvez, Managing Director, BMTC.
He adds that while the city centre is reasonably connected with a decent frequency of buses in most places, the suburbs are not. “Within the city centre, we have a good frequency of buses, but in suburbs, commuters often have to wait for 2.5 hours for a bus. The trunk and feeder service will bring the frequency to a maximum of 30 minutes,” he said.
The trunk route will have three nodal points: Electronics City, Chandapura and Attibele.
From these areas, mini buses will connect to the villages around these nodal points on the trunk route. To begin with, BMTC will introduce 65 buses on the trunk route- Kempegowda bus station to Electronic City, Chandapura and Attibele. The present BMTC services will continue while commuters understand and get used to the changes.
“This will take about a month. In the mean time, we will be procuring 110 mini buses for the feeder services,” said Parvez.
“The feeder services have been tentatively called the ‘Sampark Sarige’. But we are open to suggestions that commuters may have,” he added. The buses along the trunk route can be easily identified.
The buses along the trunk route will be KBS 3 E (for buses from KBS to Electronics City), KBS 3 C (KBS to Chandapura) and KBS 3 A (KBS to Attibele). Three is the trunk route number. In about a month, trunk services will be introduced from Shivajingar.