Buses to operate on demand for second phase of polls

Ahead of the second phase of polling this Friday, both the BMTC and the KSRTC plan to operate their fleet as per demand.

Both the Transport Corporations do not anticipate a need for more buses to be pressed into service as they foresee many voters travelling out of the city well in advance to Friday. 

“The fleet will be managed based on the demand that we see leading up to Friday. We will be operating more trips on Wednesday and Thursday as we see more people travelling to bus and train stations to travel out of the city to vote,” said an officer from the Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC).

Of the over 6,000 BMTC buses, 1,700 will be put on election duty and the rest will be available for people along routes that see a greater demand due to poor connectivity. The BMTC expects these 4,500 odd buses to complete about 40,000 trips on Friday. “We plan on taking some of the bus routes that go along the metro lines and put them onto other routes to increase their frequency along those routes,” said the officer.

Similarly, 2,200 KSRTC buses have been dedicated for election duty and the rest will be operated based on demand. These election duty buses will be used to ferry polling station staff and police officers to take them to their respective polling stations. Therefore, around 6,500 buses are in service for the public, with many being rerouted onto heavy demand routes for voters travelling out.

The KSRTC website on Tuesday showed several special buses being added to popular routes such as Bengaluru-Mysuru, Bengaluru-Mangaluru, Bengaluru-Madikeri. 

Metro services

Metro trains are expected to extend till 12 am on Friday. Train services are expected to follow the time interval of five to eight minutes during peak hours and ten minutes in non-peak hours.