It is time Bengaluru introduced the Singapore model to manage traffic snarls and decrease vehicular choke in its central business district areas, suggested Anjum Parvez, managing director of Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd (BMRCL).

“When you are met with certain tough situations and when nothing else is working, we may have to take practical steps. We need not wait until we fall apart at the seams. It is always good to act before we reach there,” he told The Hindu.

He said he was not suggesting that Bengaluru should embrace the Singapore model as a BMRCL official, but only as a common citizen. “I believe if the city adopts some tough measures, automatically the number of cars in the city will come down, more people will be forced to use public mobility and consequently the city will get a breather,” he added.

However, he added, no restrictive measures would offer sudden relief, it would take at least some 10 to 12 years to stabilise and yield some results. “Necessity is the mother of all inventions, it is not that Singapore went into a regime like this so willingly, it must have been challenging for them to start with.”

Shared mobility demands amendment of Motor Vehicle Act

At present, Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) holds a monopoly on plying buses and ferrying people. Many tech firms are ready to buy buses and operate services between their offices/campuses to the nearest metro stations. However, the existing Motor Vehicle Act does not permit such arrangement and therefore it requires amendments, Mr. Parvez said.

“Many private tech firms are ready to buy buses if they are given tailor-made permissions to operate between say gates of 10 different IT firms to metro stations. It could be a feeder service helping techies to take the metro,” he explained.

According to him, for this to happen, first the Act should be amended and the BMTC should permit IT companies. “We are discussing this with the Transport Department. A lot of thought is happening around this,” Mr. Parvez added.

Common mobility cards to become popular

Soon, passengers depended on different public mobility options such as metro train, public buses, Uber or Ola cabs and autos can travel across the country using a single card, a common mobility card, the BMRCL chief said.

According to him, the National Common Mobility Card (NCMC), an inter-operable transport card, conceived by the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, demanded multiple money transactions to make it valid and usable, and this issue has been fixed. Also, passengers faced problems while buying cards online and those glitches were removed. To make it convenient for passengers who want to buy the NCMC cards, the BMRCL has opened counters at all 73 stations without KYC verification.

“The whole idea is to make the process involved in the adoption of the NCMC cards simpler, to get more people to move onto a new card and gradually do away with the existing metro rail smart card,” he added.

First, last mobility is key

The BMRCL’s mandate was to make available a metro station within the maximum 2-km radius of every Bangalorean. “The first-mile and the last-mile mobility are the biggest bottlenecks that exist today. All stakeholders should work in tandem to make this happen,” he said while speaking at a session on ‘Future mobility’ at the Bengaluru Tech Summit-2023 on Thursday.

He said the BMRCL was committed to ensuring eco-friendly activities and to encourage eco-friendly traffic systems, metro stations were facilitated with two-wheeler and three-wheeler electric vehicle charging units.

Speaking on the occasion, Uber India director Sanjay Chadha said the passengers should shift from cabs to public transport like buses to ensure a free flow of traffic and to reduce traffic congestion. Uber has introduced electric bus service in Mumbai and Delhi in this regard, he said and added that similar services would be introduced in Bengaluru as well.

Beta Technologies director Blake Opsahi said India had great opportunities for electric aircraft. With around 200 airports, India had excellent aviation infrastructure and the number of private planes and air taxis would increase in the future, he added.