Public Bus Commute

After commuting in a reserved bus where occupancy was always below 100% and nearing 0% where I board and get down, now I am jostling for space in the public BMTC buses, but just a 2KM ride . There are a variety of buses however to choose from - top of the chart is airconditioned Vajra services with Volvo buses(Rs.10), then there is normal Suvarna buses(Rs.8/=) which are new vehicles, there is this occasional Pushpak(Rs.6/=) and the normal ones(Rs.5). I commute mostly by Volvo and Suvarna buses, but if the bus is empty, anything goes. Frequency of the buses are pretty good though I am finding it tough to find any regularity in their schedule. This is not major problem for me because I can jump into most of the buses that ply in this route.

I checked on the monthly passes for these buses - it is a bit expensive for a 2KM ride even though I ride 4 times a day. Even the daily pass is not worth the trouble, since the lunch time trips and evenings are usually the Rs.5 buses and the daily pass doesn't work in the Vajra service.

Some of the normal buses are in pretty pathetic condition. But the drivers seem to enjoy the ride zooming on it whenever possible - there is one stretch on our way where they test the machine where the heart skips a beat or two. It appears that there is no load balancing of the schedules at all for these buses(which is a good thing for me) - there are plenty of buses plying during the non-peak hours with little occupancy and the normal buses are loaded to the brim during peak hours.

The Vajra a/c buses are rarely occupied fully, in fact they have introduced more services 365J(upto the industrial area Jigani) and another 411 series. I am not sure if that makes good business sense - the Suvarna buses, which are far more cheaper would have been a better choice than the very expensive Volvo buses. But then these are far better than the Airport Services which seems to have very poor occupancy rates.