Changing the face of Bangalore metro transport corporation

Abstract

Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation is well known in circles as being one of the most profitable PSUs and the only profit-making PSU in the field of public transport in India. CCS Final Report 2012 It is a very interesting organisation to study to understand what it is doing differently than other public transport organisations. Apart from being a profit making organisation, the main role of BMTC in our city is to provide service to the people. This is the foremost objective of BMTC, one not easily forgotten. There are many initiatives taken by BMTC that are not seen anywhere in the country such as Bus Day, launching of premier Volvo services, Vayu Vajra service to the international airport, use of electronic ticketing machines, high frequency of buses, various innovative services such as the Big10 services, etc. The innovative use of available BMTC land to build commercial complexes that are then rented out is an additional source of revenue. All these features have added immense value to BMTC. However, BMIC still lacks a solid brand image. It 1s viewed as a successful Government organisation. Furthermore, despite its exemplar services, the ridership is not as high as can be. This is seen by the increased number of private vehicles on the road which are killing the city’s infrastructure. The aim of this study is to identify those features of BMTC which contribute to the low ridership and suggest ways to shift the commuters from using private transport over to public transport thereby reducing the congestion on roads. Our target are those individuals who have easy access to public transport yet choose to use private vehicles, leading to excess traffic on roads. When travelling by private vehicles becomes harder and there is priority given to public transport then real change will occur. Marketing BMTC is a new concept and one that currently has not been focussed upon by BMITC at all. There is need for both internal as well as external marketing of BMTC. Internal marketing is essential to boost the morale of the ground staff, since they are literally the face of BMTC and no change at the top will reflect at the bottom unless the ground staff understands the magnitude of their influence on commuters and how important they are to the image of BMTC. External marketing for BMTC focusses upon innovative schemes that can be launched so that BMTC can become a brand of its own; which would enable increase in ridership. Our initial approach was to study the organisation by talking to experts in the field, coming up with a list of problems and suggestions to resolve them and then presenting the same to BMTC. However, during the course of our study we realised that BMTC has full knowledge of the problems they face and is willing to adopt changes to improve itself. This shifted our focus from an outside view to the view from within the organisation, thereby enabling us to provide a holistic solution that is practical feasible keeping in mind BMTC’s limitations and implementation difficulties. The first step of the study was to study the best practices followed by public transit systems across the world and then benchmark BMTC against those standards. We floated a survey about the usage and perception of BMTC, targeted at the educated middle class who generally prefer private transport over public transport. The study of the organisation was conducted primarily through interviews across the organisation, right from the MD of BMTC to an employee who has been in the system. We have also spoken to experts in the field.