Odisha in Transformation: Innovations in public transport raises hopes of a new dawn

The government of Odisha must be commended for this focus on reliable public transportation.

Odisha is going through a steady transformation on many socio-economic fronts. One of these which is potentially impactful is public transportation. There are two major initiatives with an urban and rural focus respectively. The urban initiative operates under a Special Purpose Vehicle, called Capital Region Urban Transport (CRUT), while the rural initiative has been launched under the Location Accessible Multimodal Initiative (LAccMI) scheme.

The primary objective of CRUT is to ‘provide safe, reliable, accessible, user-friendly and sustainable public transport to the city and further setting up a mechanism to deliver public transport that keeps up the pace with demand’. The objective of the LAccMI scheme is to ‘provide multi-modal public transport connectivity for the Gram Panchayats (GPs), Block Headquarters (HQ), District HQ along with the connectivity to major economic hubs, educational and medical hubs, and transport nodes across the state’.

CRUT: Reviving Flagging Urban Transport

CRUT had its birth on May 4, 2018, taking over the then Bhubaneswar Puri Transport Services Limited (BPTSL). Services under BPTSL had slowly dwindled from a 150 sized fleet with 50,000 daily ridership in 2010 to a fleet of 25 with a daily ridership of 7,000 in 2018. BPTSL operated a Public Private Partnership (PPP) under a net cost contract model, in which the private bus operator was responsible for operating the bus with a driver and conductor and collected all the revenue.

The operator paid BPTSL a monthly route authorisation fee and shared 20 percent of non-fare box revenues. The operator, over a period, focused more on the profitable routes and exited from the non-profitable ones. There was nothing in the system to ensure a long-term perspective nor oversight and control by the authority.

The key transformation was moving to a Gross Cost Contract (GCC) model, in which the private bus operators under a PPP were responsible for owning, operations and maintenance of buses and providing drivers (also called ‘captains’), while the revenue risk was taken on by CRUT by appointing conductors (also called ‘guides’) for fare setting and collection. The operators are paid on a per kilometre basis.

An Intelligent Transportation Management System (ITMS) is in place for automatic fare collection and automatic vehicle location to have control over the services. CRUT is also responsible for providing the basic infrastructure like depots, terminals, and bus queue shelters, route planning and scheduling, and monitoring and control.

The daily traffic in the capital region (Bhubaneshwar centric with connectivity to Puri, Cuttack and Khorda) has crossed 2,50,000 with 300 buses. Services have now expanded to Rourkela with 100 buses. Expansion is also happening into other cities of Odisha including Brahmapur and Sambalpur.

CRUT also tried to be innovative in looking at other modes of transport including bicycles and auto-rickshaws. The bicycles have not been successful, a lesson to be learnt from various city experiences. Auto-rickshaws are on a slow start but have potential for last mile connectivity.

There is focused recruitment of women as ‘guides’ with a 50 percent reservation, and then also as ‘captains’ and auto-rickshaw drivers. The buses are referred to as ‘Mo Bus’, meaning ‘my bus’ in Odia. There is a strong focus on technology, not only through the ITMS, but also in modern buses including the induction of electric vehicles.

The various activities of CRUT are managed by multiple teams, many of which are outsourced to contractors who bring in professionals including postgraduates holding degrees like MBA, MCA, and MTech. The teams currently exhibit a lot of teamwork, thanks to the CRUT leadership who focus on monitoring and coordination.

LAccMI: Rural Focus

Encouraged by the success of CRUT, the Government of Odisha decided to roll out LAccMI scheme to transform rural connectivity, under the charge of Odisha State Road Transport Corporation (OSRTC). OSRTC was operating and continues to operate the inter-district buses.

The LAccMI scheme would complement what OSRTC was already doing. Many of the systems and processes from CRUT were taken into LAccMI. The 30 districts of the state of Odisha were divided into five clusters of contiguous districts each. The first cluster consisting of six districts in southern Odisha was bid out on a PPP basis under the GCC model.

It was inaugurated in October 2023 and is expected to roll out 298 buses. These include 236 non-AC 32-seater buses for GPs to Block HQ connectivity and the remaining 62 AC buses primarily of 56-seaters for Block HQ to District HQ connectivity. After initial experience in this cluster, the remaining 24 districts across four more clusters were rolled out in February 2024. While the bid awardees (one for each cluster) are in place, the full operationalisation has yet to take place due to supply of buses by the vehicle manufacturers.

The administrative framework has the Commerce & Transport Department (C&T) responsible for policy guidelines and financial support, under which the OSRTC is responsible for on-boarding the PPP partner, route planning and scheduling, fare setting and collection, overseeing execution and monitoring using the ITMS. They are also responsible for basic infrastructure like depots, ‘ama’ bus stands, and bus queue shelters.

A hierarchy of district level, sub-divisional and block level committees have been set up for monitoring at the field level. The bus operator as the PPP partner is responsible for procurement of buses, day-to-day operations and maintenance of buses in the notified routes, and depot management. The budgetary allocation during 2023-24 was Rs 656 crore, while for 2024-25, it is Rs 1,191 crore.

Similar to the impact of CRUT in enhancing urban transportation, the LAccMI scheme is expected to have significant impact in enhancing rural connectivity towards socio-economic growth. While the traffic has yet to build up on many of the GP to Block HQ routes, the ridership profile has 40 percent women, and 50 percent including women, students, and senior citizens.

Sustaining These Initiatives

With government controlling the fare setting and collection, various population segments could be charged differently from a welfare perspective. Ridership was expected to improve with full connectivity when the Block HQ to District HQ routes would also be operationalised, and of course ramping up over time if the services are timely and reliable. With water bodies in many of the coastal districts of Odisha, boat services are also to be launched in the future as part of the multi-modal initiative of rural public transport.

Going forward, the OSRTC must be open to inducting smaller vehicles, like say a capacity of 15 seats which could not only reduce costs in some of the rural routes, but also enable a higher frequency on routes. Frequency of trips is a more important determinant of service than capacity per trip.

The government of Odisha must be commended for this much desired focus on reliable public transportation across the entire state.

The key parameters that would lend to sustainability of these initiatives are (i) recognising that reliable public transport is an ‘investment’ for socio-economic development  (ii) recognising that public transport is not a financial profit making venture, but requiring (and thus providing) adequate budgetary support (iii) retaining all revenue related matters under government (iv) involving PPPs for core operations and maintenance under a GCC model (v) investing in quality infrastructure required by the users and operators (vi) effective planning, monitoring and control of the services with transparency using ITMS with professional and passionate staff.

G Raghuram is Professor Emeritus, Gujarat Maritime University and Chanakya University, and Advisor, The Infravision Foundation. Views are personal, and do not represent the stance of this publication.