Digital systems to improve bus commute experience

Across India, city residents who travel by public transport all share a common trepidation-whether the bus they want to catch has already left the bus stop.

- Soumya Chatterjee

This anxiety comes from a lack of infrastructure in place to track the movement of buses on city streets, making the commute unreliable and unattractive.

However, with the intelligent transport management system (ITMS) being made an integral part of the PM-E bus Sewa scheme, urban mobility experts in India are hopeful that the technique will set a positive trend in laying a technological backbone for bus services from the planning stage itself, rather than an afterthought.

ITMS can be loosely defined as a set of integrated information technology systems to track the real-time location of buses providing real-time updates to passengers and operators about bus arrivals and departures, collating ticketing information electronically, and ensuring the efficient management of vehicle maintenance, driver schedules, and operational logistics, among other facilities.

Currently, buses as a means of public transport are largely used only by captive users due to underfunding and policy oblivion over the past decade and more. On the other hand, during the same period, Metro systems have dominated the discussion mobility in India. With unprecedented funding, the Metro rail network in India is poised to become the second largest in the world only after China.

However, with the anticipation of a larger and wider e-bus scheme by the central government and the focus back on buses even at the state governments' level, experts are advocating for a standard and scalable approach to deploy these IT systems.

Problem of interoperability

In absence of set standards, government-owned entistate ties that mostly hold monopolies in the sector have failed to maintain and scale these IT functions.