WHY.

End of December 2014, we were invited to talk at Do Din , a techno arts festival held every year in Hyderabad by Hyderabad Urban Lab . We were excited at the moment we were asked to talk about our love of Z . Well , the presentation that day dint go well owing to our unpreparedness. so, here is what we actually wanted to tell every one that day .

what is love of Z ?

love of Z is a blog run by three people who believe state operated public transport in andhra pradesh and telangana deserve more space on internet than what they have now . through this blog, we want to spread love and celebrate public transport operated by the corporation(s) we love .

Come march 21 and first 8 kilometers of hyderabad metro will be functional . YAY ! time to party right . I just cant wait for the mighty rail to walk in to the gullies of yousufguda basti . How many of you are excited about the mighty metro ?  finally we are getting rapid mass transit right. Oh wait don't we already have MMTS .

Metro is saying it will transport Hyderabad to future, So what is "transporting" Hyderabad now ? Not the metro obviously!

Introducing... The cheap and best mode of transport connecting the east and west of the city. With low floor buses and comfortable cushion seats, travel has never been this easy. Just sit back and enjoy your ride through the chord of the city. Don't worry if you don't get a seat because standing is very comfortable with increased clear heights and ergonomically designed bars to hold. While you enjoy your journey, don't worry about the security as we assure you ample protection with trained drivers, conductors and two CCTV cameras . Equipped with an efficient GPS system and integrated with the Hyderabad ITS, get next stop announcements in three different languages. Seamlessly integrated with major intercity bus terminals at LB Nagar and Dilsukhnagar, transfers to other Major centres have been simplified with major node connections at LB Nagar, Dilsukhnagar, Koti, Abids, Lakdikapul, Ameerpet and Kukatpally. Good connectivity to the long distance terminal at Nampally provided with proposal for bus terminal at Miyapur underway. MMTS integration included at Malakpet, Lakdikapul, Khairatabad and Bharatnagar. The route will be provided with 49 stops located at a distance of 1 km from the previous. Each stop will have a bus shelter with adequate seating facility and all major nodes will have GPS enabled information boards displaying the time of next bus. Additionally 33% seats reserved on priority basis for women. The differently abled can access buses aided by special ramps provided on entry and exit doors and senior citizens will have seats reserved. Special one day passes can be availed at ₹ 70 which can be used for the services across the city. Monthly passes can be availed at ₹ 900.Two depots located at strategic locations, hayathnagar and bhel on the two ends , plans are on to extend the depots to muthangi on one end and choutuppal on the other making it probably the longest mixed route bus service in India.Making the most of mixed route services, relieving services and ac buses have been pressed in to free the rush between major nodes.

Should we resort to this kind of branding and false promises to make people believe they can reach their destinations safely ? Of all the things metro is saying it is doing for the first time, most are already being done by a very humble rtc. with less than 30 depots and just over 3500 buses, Buses account for more or less than 40% public transport trips made in Hyderabad. The said route 218 traverses exactly through the same route as metro. We never would say Hyderabad does not deserve mass transport but what we question are the priorities. Why does a corporation which has been a life line of city for so long have to wait for the central government's peanuts at a time when Hundreds of acres of prime land is being given away for metro.

Current depots and the future plans for depots in Hyderabad.

CTS for HMA has raised the hopes .. We hope all of the good stuff said in the plan are executed and the corporation does not have to go around begging for property. It is high time public transport is considered a service and not a source of revenue for the state government.



Closing off , why do we have to wait for metro when we already have metro express, deluxe and luxury !

Special Purpose Vehicles

Brought up in Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam , I have had the luxury of hopping on and off buses to travel anywhere in the city . As a kid I always was in an impression that all of the cities had buses or to make it professional "formal public transport" . After seeing the first strike of buses in Hyderabad , I was exposed to the truth that how a city is crippled with out public transport. Then after a long time when I started looking for services in small towns and tier 3 cities, I could never find them. Then I realized even how after the corporation in then undivided andhrapradesh being so huge, could not manage urban operations.

Fast forward 2009, we were all excited about the first sanctions of JnNURM. The corporation was excited about finally getting financial assistance to upgrade the fleet in at least the mission cities. As the sanctions trickled down to every one, GoI realized how JnNURM has transformed bus transport at least in few cities. I agree there are teething problems in many of the places where public transport was initiated for the first time. This might be because of the one size fits all concept * of the scheme may be.

After the first set of sanctions, MoUD had decided to give an "additional central assistance (ACA)"  to procure 10,000 buses, depots and ancillary facilities as promised in the Union Budget 2013-2014, following which a new set of revised guidelines and check lists to qualify for the "assistance" were released as a document. Unlike the last time, this installment the allocations were done on first come-first serve basis . Additional to the guidelines, there were five conditions put up , which were to be met within two months of  first sanctions.

Of the five conditions, two point towards setting up of city specific special purpose vehicles (spv s) . Following the issuance of guidelines in mid 2013, APSRTC of then undivided andhrapradesh initiated setting up of city specific SPV s in early 2014 .

Coming to the most intersting part and the thing i would love to debate, APSRTC decided to form four SPV s two each for telangana and the residual state of andhrapradesh .

"If a city is small and isfed from adjoining area/cities, the State Government can notify all such cities and adjoining areas as “Local Planning Area” and constitute an Special Purpose Vehicles for such area. Such “Special Purpose Vehicles” can operate city buses under stage carriage permit in the local “Planning Area” in a manner that the maximum headway in peak time and non-peak time in similar to city bus operation."

Quoting the point 3.5 of JnNURM guidelines, APSRTC had decided to form SPV s as different zones ,Karimnagar,Hyderabad,Vijayawada&Vizianagaram,Kadapa&Nellore each serving a particular number of districts under them. The whole process of forming SPV s was initiated in early 2014 and there was confitmation from GoI in mid 2014. After the state split as Telangana and Andhrapradesh, Andhrapradesh notified the formation of SPVs on 5th January 2015 where as Telangana state did it on 20th January.

Over the years, APSRTC as a corporation has evolved looking at the counterparts in other states being changed structurally, for example the splitting of corporations in karnataka and forming strategic business units. often it has been suggested that having a separate corporation for hyderabad would at least solve the current problems at least partially. I have a conflicting point here, If only seperate corporations are the solution,then why is that BEST from Mumbai and MTC from chennai still questioned for efficiency. But, I have to agree with the point that urban operations are different from intercity and rural operations and they need a different mindset towards them . Hence the idea of having SPV s for urban operations is fine for now in the states of andhrapradesh and telangana considering they'll be 100% owned subsidiaries of their parent corporations. I see this as a new opportunity where funds are spent for urban operations and not complaining that we have other commitments.

Of the many ambitious institutional changes that JnNURM proposed , the formation of SPV s is just a start, if all of the proposals are implemented with their true spirit, then we will see a bright future where all of the cities and towns have the luxury of hopping buses to move around. We at love of Z cannot wait for city buses to start in Karimnagar,Warangal,Ongole,Kurnool,Srikakulam and many more cities. caution should be maintained and conclusions about the efficiency of the service should not be drawn in a small time considering they are just taking their baby steps.

Ending this post, one interesting observation, how could hyderabad,vijayawada and visakhapatnam which are considerably big cities be included in the SPV s while the guidelines state small cities can be clubbed as a planning area. I seriously hope this is not a desperate attempt to just get that funding from JnNURM.

thank you for the patience in reading the post. relevant graphics supporting the post will be put up in a month or so. please come back and do suggest on improving the post

Sources

SPV - Telangana , Government of Telangana
SPV- Andhrapradesh , Government of Andhrapradesh
JnNURM - ACA , JnNURM,MoUD
Delusory Transformations, Gaurav Mittal

Metro Express - ReLoaded

for starters, metro express is a mid level service run in urban agglomerations of hyderabad, vijayawada,visakhapatnam and tirupati . They generally have limited stops and are often run as non stop moffusil services.

JnNURM 1 gave major thrust to this segment as the corporation branded all of the semi low floor buses procured in the scheme as metro express . Last time around we had buses from ashok leyland and tata . while all of the ashokleyland diesel buses were for hyderabad, vijayawada got cng variant of ashok leyland and visakhapatnam,tirupati got tata buses . hyderabad got a few tata s too. while the tata buses were buit by ACGL , all of the CNG AL s were built by MG Auto and others were built by smaller body fabrication units.  While the bodies built by MG Auto and ACGL are still sturdy, the ones built by others are almost in shambles. So, this time around the corporation has decided not to hand over the body fabrication duties to third party builders and explore other options considering the corporation's only body fabrication unit at miyapur has a capacity of building only 600 buses in a financial year. 

With mixed responses from the ' urban bus specifications (UBS) " , MoUD has prepared a document " urban bus specifications - ii (UBS-II) for this round of sanctions under JnNURM.  The most interesting thing this time is, the push for ITS . The document, UBS-II has specifications for passenger announcement systems, bus tracking technologies which sound good for now considering the concept of ITS is nascent in many of the cities. 

Coming to the STAR of this post, the corporation as already mentioned earlier in the post has decided to procure chassis and hand over the body building duties to Ashok Leyland itself. Ashok leyland which in the recent past has made one of the best innovations in urban transport vehicles - Jan Bus has done a wonderful job in churning out a very good product in association with MG Auto. This private fabrication unit always stands out with unique designs and sturdy body.

The bus at first sight has obvious looks of the Jan Bus because of the similar cowl and headlight cluster. This bus is equipped with " Ley Matic" which ashok leyland claims is one of a kind manual-automatic transmission system.. this reminds me of those touch cum type phones. Speaking about the interiors, the roof is powder coated steel and the saloon is stainless steel as in the earlier buses. Flooring too is not different. It has the same vinyl flooring in grey color. Hope it is of good quality and will stand the harsh usage. There are two strip of led lights along the aisle on the roof. these for me were too bright .. have to see how they perform on the roads. The seats are same as in the older buses but all of them have arm rests this time. Just wishing people wont peel off the foam on them.

Coming to the exteriors, i've explained about the front, but the rear this time has an integrated tail lamp unlike the last time when there were 4 different slots for the lights. the whole body itself looks boxy and is clean with nice curves unlike the excess curves last time.

Oh ! the dash board and ITS components . There are two CCTV cameras inside the bus for safety and one on the rear to assist the driver. Also, there is one LED board and speakers for passenger information system. As usual there are   LED destination boards on the front, side and rear. there is one microphone at the driver seat . All of these are connected to a touch screen on the dash board from where the driver can switch between all of the ITS components . all of this system has been developed and installed by KPIT, Pune.

A.P.S.R.T.C JnNURM New Ashok Leyland METRO EXPRESS Bus.

T.S.R.T.C JnNURM New Ashok Leyland METRO EXPRESS Bus.

T.S.R.T.C JnNURM New Ashok Leyland METRO EXPRESS Bus.

A.P.S.R.T.C jnnurm New Ashok Leyland METRO EXPRESS Bus.

A.P.S.R.T.C jnnurm New Ashok Leyand METRO EXPRESS Buses.

A.P.S.R.T.C jnnurm New Ashok Leyland METRO EXPRESS Buses.

interiors of the new metro express with the led strip lights switched on one side

 interiors of the new metro express

 LEYMATIC and the control panel on dash board of new metro express

A.P.S.R.T.C jnnurm New Ashok Leyland METRO EXPRESS Bus.

A.P.S.R.T.C jnnurm New Ashok Leyland METRO EXPRESS Bus.

A.P.S.R.T.C jnnurm New METRO EXPRESS Bus.

 

 A.P.S.R.T.C JnNURM METRO EXPRESS of Chitoor-1 depot 
doing Chittor-Tirupati NON-STOP service

 A.P.S.R.T.C JnNURM METRO EXPRESS of Chitoor-2 depot 

doing Chittor-Devalampeta express service

After looking at all of these features, we are blown away by the effort put in to this small package of semi low floor ashok leyland (600mm) bus . Hope these new guys are looked after well by the depots and the ITS components function with out any glitches .