As the Shakti scheme is seeing crowded buses in Bengaluru and other parts of the State, civil society groups and experts have now renewed their demand for more buses and bus lanes. This comes ahead of the State Budget Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is all set to present on July 7.
On Sunday, various civil society groups in Bengaluru participated in an open citizens’ assembly — ‘Let’s Move Bengaluru’ to amplify “the public voices in building sustainable cities and in a bid push towards public transport with the expectation to optimise passenger-centric public transport, and communicate the practical solutions to policymakers that can be implemented in the city.”
“Over the past 25 years, the government has heavily invested in the construction of concrete infrastructure, such as flyovers and elevated roads, only encouraging the purchase of more private vehicles. These only provide temporary relief and do not address the root cause of traffic congestion. Moreover, these projects often come at the cost of environmental degradation, displacement of people, and loss of green spaces,” argued Ashish Verma, converner, IISc Sustainable Transportation Lab, batting for augmenting public transport especially buses.
The introduction of the Shakti scheme recently was met with a lot of admiration from various stakeholders, but as Yamuna Ganesh, a garment factory union leader, pointed out, “The scheme remains inadequate with the lack of buses in the city. With most factories and its workers located on the outskirts of the city, the BMTC needs to build a more dense network in those localities.” Gajalakshmi, a member of the Slum Dwellers Federation, added that the community in Benson Town is not able to use the scheme as the bus routes of the area have been discontinued since the pandemic.
Greenpeace campaigner Amruta Nair called for the revival of the 11 bus priority lanes as conceived by the DULT under the comprehensive metropolitan plan. The Bangalore Apartment Federation noted that the transportation system in the city is fragmented and uncoordinated, with different modes of transportation operated by different agencies resulting in a lack of seamless connectivity between different modes of transportation.
Rajeev Gowda, former MP and spokesperson of the Indian National Congress who was one of the panelists, accepted that the bus fleet may be falling short and suggested public-private partnership to meet the new demand. “Ridership has jumped by 14 lakh, we can roughly hold it as there are 7 lakh new bus users from the past two weeks. We are definitely short on the fleet, and we could look beyond the public bus fleet to meet the new growing demand, maybe work a partnership model with private players, another option is CSR funds,” he said.
