Ab BUS

"Public Transport Sucks"

"Public Transport is Not Efficient"

"Buses are in Bad Shape"

"Buses Occupy too much Space"

"Bad Buses are the Root Cause of Pollution and Traffic Congestion in our City"

"Drivers and Conductors are the Rudest People Alive"

"Bus Services should be Privatized"

All of us are fed up! We are fed up of waiting for buses. We are fed up of driving for hours together in the horrifying traffic that we have to bear with.

Since I stay in Pune, I shall limit my discussion to Pune. But out of common sense, we can understand that the same logic stands true for any city. Here are a few facts --

Close to 800 Private Vehicles (this includes 2-wheelers and 4-wheelers) get registered with Pune RTO every day.

Pune has a shocking 1200 buses to a requirement of 2500 buses.

People are bound to buy their own vehicles in the absence of a robust Public Transport system. And it’s easy to realize now that most of the chaos on roads is created by private vehicles, especially cars.

90% of these cars carry just a single person. Roads are a public property and all the people have an equal right to use it. Does a single person require so much space to commute?
Building flyovers is just a temporary workaround! And by the time a flyover comes up, it’s already too late as traffic increases way beyond the flyover can handle. Classic examples are the University Road & Hadapsar flyovers.

No flyover can sustain traffic for a long time. It simply redirects traffic from one busy square to the next. And, soon we require new flyovers in the vicinity.

A smarter solution is improving public transport. Why don’t we follow Belgium’s model of FREE & EFFICIENT public transport for all? This will reduce traffic many fold as an army of 30-40 private vehicles will be replaced by a single bus. It’s the best way to reduce traffic jams, pollution & accidents on roads. And this way we can fight Global Warming and reduce dependence on imported oil as well.