Will BMLTA address the ever-growing transport woes in Bengaluru?

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For Charuta Pradeep, a house surgeon, getting an auto from her metro station is a daily struggle. For women like her who travel alone, last-mile minute connectivity is a nightmare, and not just late in the evening. “Sometimes, I pay double or even triple the auto or cab fare,” she says.
Most people living in Bengaluru end up taking a taxi or auto to reach metro stations or from there to their final destination. In Sameeksha Biswas’s case, she has to walk for 15 minutes to reach her office after getting off the metro.

Ranked 10th in the world on the TomTom Traffic Index, a listing brought out by the Dutch GPS company that compares over 400 cities in nearly 60 countries, Bengaluru is one of the most congested cities in India. The city has high vehicle ownership, perhaps a corollary of a weak public transportation system. Though the city has several transport corporations like Bengaluru Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL), Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC), Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), etc., each works in its own silo, leading to poor coordination in traffic management and mobility.

The National Urban Transport Policy (NUTP), 2006, framed by the Centre’s ministry of urban development, recommended the setting up of a unified metropolitan transport authority (UMTA) for every city in India with a population of 1 million or more.

The Bangalore Metropolitan Land Transport Authority (BMLTA), which serves as the UMTA for the Bangalore Metropolitan Region, was established by the Karnataka government as the first response to this concept.
However, for the last 16 years, the bill remains to be empowered as an act. There have been several attempts in the past, and now the state government is planning to table the bill during the current assembly session.

What is the purpose of BMLTA bill?

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Satya Arikutharam, former chief technical advisor to the state government, and now an independent consultant, said the function of this bill is to coordinate and plan public transport as one entity. The bill, once enacted, will issue directions to internal stakeholders like the Bangalore Development Authority, BBMP, BMTC and BMRCL, and aim for increased coordination between these stakeholders.

Manjula Vinjamuri, commissioner of the Directorate of Urban Land Transport (DULT), the body responsible for drafting the bill, said, “BMLTA will be an independent legal entity with full technical and financial authority as well as accountability. BMLTA would provide a robust model for transport service delivery and accountability in the governance of the urban transport sector.”

A fragmented transport module does not help the city

Arikutharam said Singapore realised the need for a multimodal transport network in 1995 and London in 2000. Reports suggest that in Singapore, the share of the peak hour public transport stands at 67 percent after the multimodal system was introduced. “If I am leaving the metro, and then again taking a private cab then it tends to become expensive, so most people take their own vehicle. Last-mile connectivity is important,” he added.

Will BMLTA address the ever-growing transport woes?

Civic activist Sathya Sankaran, Bengaluru’s first ‘bicycle mayor’, said, “One of the fundamentals in BMLTA is that transportation is being planned close to land use and the booming real estate sector in the city. Public transport, with multiple agencies, tends to compete with each other for fares, routes, etc. Here, the planning function is taken over by BMLTA.”

Srinivas Alavilli, head of civic participation, Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, said the biggest gain of BMLTA is to finally have data to be able to study traffic patterns in the city.

Taking Kochi as an example, Arikutharam said that the Kochi Metropolitan Transport Authority (KMTA) has consolidated water and land transport across the city with a unified ticketing system. “Though currently KMTA faces severe fund problems, we are sure that such multimodal systems will succeed in India,” he said. “Further, the bill attempts to bring accountability among individual stakeholder like BBMP, BMTC, etc. We will also be able to review the funds transparently,” he added.

Activists say BMLTA, despite its pressing need, failed to see the light of the day due to the lack of political intent. “We have been waiting for a long time, for over 16 years,” Alavilli added.

Vinjamuri said, “One of the mandates of the BMLTA is to put in place the framework, regulations and mechanisms to establish an effective coordination mechanism, encompassing all strategic and operational matters, among various urban transport agencies, infrastructure development agencies and traffic management agencies providing facilities and services in the urban mobility region.”

But not enough, activists say

Activists say the BMLTA is much needed to fight Bengaluru’s traffic woes but runs the risk of becoming just another bureaucratic agency without the necessary authority to enact change.

“It is a paper tiger,” said Sandeep Anirudhan, convenor of Citizens’ Agenda for Bengaluru. The reason Transport for London or the Singapore transport systems have worked is because they have provided absolute authority to transport authority, he said.

In the 33-member BMLTA committee, there are only three experts from urban mobility, corporate governance and finance, and two representatives from academic institutions—a poor balance between democracy and bureaucratic governance. “Our system does not allow for experts to come into play?” Alavilli asked. Additionally, with over 30 percent of the members in the organisation representing the government, activists say BMLTA fails to decentralise the powers.

Vijayan Menon, president of Citizens’ Action Forum, said that without the presence of transport experts, most of the functions will depend on private consultants. “Are we looking at further privatisation?” he added.

Kathyayini Chamaraj, executive trustee, CIVIC Bangalore, said, “As per the 74th Amendment, the metropolitan planning committee (MPC) is the constitutional body to prepare a vision for the city. However, BMLTA does not mention MPC.” Menon added that BMLTA should have been integrated into the MPC.

Activists say the 74th Constitutional Amendment’s spirit is violated by a bureaucratically robust bill without local decision-making authority.
But Vinjamuri said, “BMLTA is the UMTA with its focus on mobility planning and integration of land use and transport planning.”
Though BMLTA attempts to solve the transport and mobility problem across Bengaluru, the words used in the bill such as “recommend”, “promote” and “review” make it an advisory body without authoritative powers, activists add.

Chamaraj said that Section 22 of the bill says, “The Planning Authority shall necessarily consult the Authority during the preparation or revision of the Master Plan,” leaving it unclear whether BMLTA is superior to the body charting out the master plan or vice versa.

Time to see the light of the day

Sankaran added that while it is not a perfect bill, it is a very good first step. “At the end of the day, it is a legislative bill, and we can go to the individual MLAs (members of the legislative assembly) and ask them to debate the questions inside the assembly,” he added.

Though Chamaraj notes that once passed, it’s a Herculean task to amend an act, most activists agree that after a long wait the state government should table and pass the bill.

On plans to hold further public consultations, Vinjamuri said, “Extensive consultations have been made over two years with all relevant stakeholders and experts in the domain and, hence, we see no need for another public consultation.”