Ahmedabad, 5 July, 2014

Following widespread protests across Ahmedabad against newly introduced route rationalization of Ahmedabad Municipal Transport Service(AMTS) buses, AMTS Chairman Babubhai Zadafia today said the issue will be sorted out by Monday and some routes where people are facing difficulties will be resumed again.

AMTS Mayor and Standing Committee Chairman both said that they will look into the issue and old routes will resumed wherever needed.

In another development, the Ahmedabad Police is in action now with more PCR vans and police station staff on BRTS routes and AMTS depots. Traffic police teams are moved to roads where traffic has been affected following protests.

Author’s note:

The problem with today’s route rationalization move of AMTS was that it was too sudden. It was implemented without announcement in well-advance.

The AMTS announced route rationalization just on Friday evening, and people came to know about it on Saturday morning through newspapers.

When regular passengers who use AMTS buses to go to college, jobs suddenly knew about unavailability of buses they were shocked. Their shock converted to anger and anger was expressed through protest.

At some places the protest resulted into stone pelting over buses, at some other places blockade of traffic and at some other places slogans and gathering of crowd.

Route regularization could be executed in phase wise – experimental manner with proper study. Announcement in this regard could be made well-in-advance, at least before a week. Proper advertisement could be published. Posters, on bus stations and inside the buses was other option.

Single ticket journey for BRTS/AMTS could be executed. The authority could ensure that cost of direct journey through AMTS and journey through combination of AMTS/BRTS would remain same. Pass holders could be assured that their existing pass will be accepted by BRTS as well for some time.

Also there’s an opinion that why AMTS buses can’t run on BRTS lanes? Long BRTS lanes stay unused when BRTS buses are not on track, so why putting burden of AMTS, ST and other buses on regular traffic lanes? Why can’t all govt/AMC run bus services use BRTS lane?