Diesel up in smoke The costs of an inefficient public transport system are passed on to the commuters by both bus operators and the government.
By A J SIMOES In 1990, I paid eighty paisa for a bus ride from Mapusa to Calangute. Ten years later, the fare had risen to five rupees. Fares had gone up 6.25 times in a span of ten years. During this period, the price of diesel increased from Rs 6 to Rs 18 per litre. Bus fares had increased twice as fast as diesel prices. How do the bus operators and the authorities decide how much the bus commuter must pay? Is it finance, politics -- or both -- that determines our fate vis a vis public transport? For the last three months, the bus operators and the Goa government have been negotiating a further hike in bus fares. The bus operators insist that the present fares are not enough to make their business financially viable with the price of diesel at Rs 21 per litre. (Since then, the price is down by a rupee.) The bus operators want a 22 per cent hike. The government is bargaining for 10%. Like vendors and buyers at the bazaar. To make matters worse, the two parties are using different curriencies. While the bus operators have a financial agenda, the Goa government has a political agenda. Nobody cares about the commuters, who are often forced to travel like cattle in the buses. At least, the cattle have Maneka Gandhi to fight for their rights. The commuters' fate is being decided, but they are neither consulted nor considered except, maybe, as a vote bank. One of the main concerns of the government should be the safety aspect of our public transport, which at present is unacceptable for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons are intrinsic to the modus operandi. Most buses are not run by the owner, but are leased to the operating crew of driver-conductor. The owner expects to receive a fixed amount of money at the end of each day from the crew. This forces the crew to maximise their take per trip by a combination of overcrowding, overcharging and overspeeding. In some cases, the crew even manages to skip an entire trip for the day, which leads to abuse of man and machine -- because the cancellation of one trip leads to overloading of other trips -- besides causing inconvenience to commuters. During operations, conductors and drivers communicate the start-stop instructions by using a whistle, instead of a bell in the driver's cabin, which can be operated from any part of the bus. This often leads to a communication breakdown between the conductor and driver. Sometimes, with disastrous consequences for commmuters, who may be boarding or alighting. This happens often, because the driver is sitting right near a noisy engine, while the rest of the bus is equally noisy because of loud music being played, and passengers talking loudly to be heard over the music system. To this, we can add the noise from the exhaust system and the background noises from other traffic sharing the road-space. Uncontrolled use of horns are another source of danger. The bus crews have an irritating habit of crawling-along when they have few passengers, and barreling or speeding along when they are overloaded. Both these practises endager the lives of passengers and pedestrians alike. When the bus is crawling, other traffic is forced to overtake, often dangerously, and with deadly consequences. When the bus is overloaded and speeding, we have a double-whammy in terms of lowered control and ability to stop fast enough. A break work on its ability to absorb momentum (kinetic energy) of the vehicle. Unfortunately, momentum is a product of load and speed. So, the brakes on a bus which is overloaded and overspeeding, will either completely fail or prove quite inadequate in an emergency. A lot of accidents are caused this way, because the bus is completely out of the driver's control. In the last dozen years, fares have been increased four times, with no change in the travel conditions or the comfort-level for commuters. With each increase in the fares granted, the government laid down the same conditions which were never followed by the bus-operators, nor were they enforced by the RTO. Each time the fares were raised, the operators were given a whole set of guidelines. Like, for instance (i) Drivers and conductors must wear uniforms. (ii) Tickets must be issued to passengers (iii) Standing passengers should not exceed the numbers authorised by the RTO for each bus (iv) Buses must depart bus stops or the terminal on schedule (v) Buses should not speed to make up lost time. But, even now, after a dozen years, these rules are open flouted under the noses of the RTO. With impugnity. Being a regular commuter, one has witnessed the strange functioning of the law-enforcers at the Mapusa bus stand. They work in collusion with the operators. When it's time for a bus to leave, a policeman/RTO approaches the bus. He has a register in one hand, a pen in the other, and a whistle between his lips. He stands in front of the bus, looks at the driver and blows his whistle. The driver starts his engine. The RTO makes a note on his register and walks away. Both have observed the word of the law. The bus engine will then continue to idle for anything between 10 to 20 minutes before the bus actually leaves the bus-stand. As the bus is leaving, the conductor slips Rs 5 in the policeman's hand. Earlier, this was done covertly. But, nowadays, it's done quite openly. Both the law and the rupee have been devalued. One fails to understand why a government headed by an IIT graduate cannot take a more scientific approach to the fixation of bus-fares. Surely, they have their own financial wizards to do a detailed costing for a simple operation like this one. All they have to do is to identify the various cost centres associated with running a bus transport service. For example: the cost of finance or capital, fuel, service and maintenance, consumables, amortisation, tyres and tubes, wages and salaries, overheads and the like. Then add a fair profit, and then establish the tariff. Instead, we have before us the unedifying spectacle of educated people behaving like vegetable vendors at the Friday market in Mapusa. A rough estimate shows that the buses in Goa burn up about 3000 litres of diesel per day whilst idling their engines. This is a loss of Rs 60,000 per day only on diesel. Add to this the damage to the environment and to health. The damage to the bus engine and body-work. Especially for diesel engines, the cost of idling is very high, due to vibrations and glazing of cylinder walls. All these costs are quitely passed onto the commuters, by the bus operators and the government. As an earlier generation would have put it in the local language, "mazranchem khel, undranchem moron". -------- A J Simoes is a retired cost-engineer, an impressive number-cruncher, and has been a close watcher of environmental issues in Goa and beyond ever since he got intrigued by the Konkan Railway claims in the early 'nineties. ########################################################################## # Send submissions for Goanet to [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # PLEASE remember to stay on-topic (related to Goa), and avoid top-posts # # More details on Goanet at http://joingoanet.shorturl.com/ # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others # ##########################################################################
