To bring suburbs closer to Bangalore,BMTC plans to roll out new bus services this month

To begin with,BMTC will operate 110 buses between Kempegowda Bus Station and Electronic City,KBS and Chandapura and KBS and Attibele Circle. The route has been designated as “Trunk 3” and a bus will arrive every two to three minutes at designated bus stops in suburban centres.

“To simplify identification,such buses will be marked with their designated routes followed by the first alphabet of the suburban destination. So a Big trunk from KBS to Electronic City will be marked as 3E,KBS to Chandapura 3C and KBS to Attibele 3A. Further,passengers may proceed to their respective villages using another batch of 40 feeder buses that will run every 10 to 20 minutes,” said BMTC managing director Anjum Parwez.

Sources in BMTC said the project aims to increase local connectivity with minimum change of buses,thereby,encouraging more people to use public transport. BMTC will spend Rs 38 crore to buy trunk buses and Rs 10 crore on feeder buses for each of the 12 routes. Some 70 buses will run on each trunk route.

BMTC officials claim they have already prepared the feasibility report on the project and identified several suburban centres across 11 other routes. “On the basis of positives and limitation we face during trial implementation,we will roll out similar operations from Kempegowda Bus Station to suburban areas on Hosur,Bannerghatta,Kanakpura,Mysore,Magadi,Tumkur,Bellary,Tannery,Hennur,Old Madras and Old airport roads,” Parwez said.

The Big Trunk program is an expansion of BMTC’s direction-based bus services introduced in 2009. These services are intended to make it easier for people to understand and use bus routes.

The Big 10 and Big Circle buses run on main roads in a simple grid: the Big 10 buses run on the 12 major roads in and out of the city and Big Circle buses operate in overlapping routes around the outer ring road.

The green Big 10 buses run on main roads such as Bellary Road or Hosur Road while blue Big 10 buses connect two major roads,such as Tumkur road and Hosur road,with each other.