Its heartening to read that the BMTC continues to show an open mind to using/adopting technology & new thinking to meets its goals.

GPS, Volvos for city commuters, the grid route system, parisara-vahini buses, inner ring road services and now, a proposal to use smart cards.

The Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) is working on introducing smart cards….

I’m reminded of the system in Singapore where this “multi-modal” automated fare collection enables a passenger to use a single card to pay for both metro as well as bus services. The first time I experienced this, I was totally pleased as punch!

However, the difference here now seems to be in the fact that topping up of the card can also be done within the bus itself.

If he has run out of credit amount in his card, the commuter can recharge the card by making payment to the conductor/driver in the bus itself.

This is pretty novel, to say the least, and very commuter friendly! Its like the day-passes that one can buy from the conductor these days! Kudos to BMTC!

What with the Bangalore Metro around the corner (!), its my hope that the concerned authorities keep this factor in mind while devising the system. Ah, it seems they have heard my hopes:

Mr. Sandhu said the system would be an open-end solution that could integrate itself with any future changes in public transport system, including the proposed metro and monorail systems in the city.

While change is imperative in these times, its my hope that all this will not make this public transport system too expensive.

As we know, a rupee does not go a long way these days, if at all!!!

:)