How long this Terminal disuse?

Baiyappanahalli and Peenya KSRTC satellite terminals were designed to decongest the crowded Majestic. But poor choice of location, lack of connectivity with other transport modes and private players have severely cramped these projects.  

Gridlocked, the roads leading to the City centre appeared hopelessly dysfunctional in that weekend holiday rush. But as thousands sat trapped in their vehicles, a grand plan to decongest Majestic with satellite bus terminals remains a diluted pipedream.

True, the Mysuru Road KSRTC terminus has worked flawlessly. Mysuru and Kerala-bound buses terminate there, the shuttle buses doing the link-up job. But the model could not be replicated in Peenya and Baiyappanahalli, where an 11-platform, fully equipped terminus decays due to shocking disuse.

Neatly designed bus bays, widely spread out seats, clean toilets and spacious parking slots, the Baiyappanahalli station has no reason to complain on the infrastructure front. Yet, it languishes for want of buses and yes, passengers.

Till 10 pm, the huge facility wears a desolate look serving merely as a parking space for APSRTC buses.

The only crowd that collects emerges in trickles at around 9.30 pm. Passengers who opt for this station as a pick-up point while booking await the arrival of buses from the congested city centre. For, no bus terminates at this terminal. Laments a passenger, B S Selvaraju, “It is sad that this fantastic facility is going waste. People don’t even know it exists. If buses start from here, that will not only decongest Majestic but also drive traffic away from chaotic KR Puram.”

Transport hub plans
Five years ago, when the State government kicked off operations here, it had a grand yet workable plan: A transport hub, linking the satellite station with the Baiyappanahalli Metro terminal, barely half a kilometer away.

The old railway station in the vicinity fitted perfectly with that design. Passengers could seamlessly hop on and hop off multiple transport modes with ease.

But the plan has remained where it was: the drawing room. KSRTC is yet to take full possession of its part of the land. Land acquisition is caught up in a legal wrangle over compensations and the original cost of the transport hub has escalated well past Rs 400 crore. Frankly put, the hub is not in anybody’s immediate agenda.

KSRTC Managing Director Rajender Kumar Kataria agrees that cost escalation and connectivity remain big issues. The relatively remote location of the existing terminal is also problematic. As KSRTC personnel at the station emphasise, passengers find it tough to commute the short 1.5 to 2 km distance from Old Madras Road to the terminal. “There are hardly any BMTC buses.

Autorickshaws demand Rs 50 to 100. How will people come,” questions a passenger. The Railway Parallel Road on which the terminal exists is narrow and faces a ban on movement of buses in the morning hours. Exploiting these limitations, private buses bound for Kolar, Chennai, Tirupati and other Andhra Pradesh destinations pick up passengers on the road. But these buses stop right at the mouth of the KR Puram cable-stayed bridge, triggering one of Bengaluru’s heaviest traffic congestions.

Hit by private buses
The highly unregulated private bus services have also hit KSRTC in other ways. As a top transport official points out, private operators did not move out of their hubs in Kalasipalya and Gandhinagar when KSRTC services were shifted to Mysuru road and Peenya terminals. The government has found it tough to dislodge them from their deeply entrenched hubs, although traffic management in those areas has taken a severe beating.

As for KSRTC, its Mysuru-bound passengers did take shuttle buses to the satellite terminals, but those heading to Hyderabad and beyond gave the Peenya terminal the miss. They opted for private buses instead. Result: A big loss of about Rs 12 crore to KSRTC in three months. Finding this flight of passenger revenue to private buses unsustainable, the transport corporation promptly shifted back to Majestic. 

To strike a balance, KSRTC has now proposed to allow Kerala State Road Transport Corporation buses to start from here. Kataria explains that there is a big demand from the Malayalee population in the surroundings of Peenya. Kerala buses would then take the Outer Ring Road, bypass the city centre to reach the Mysuru Road satellite bus stand and head to Kerala.

Reactivate project
The refusal by private transporters to shift is precisely why KSRTC is reluctant to terminate Andhra Pradesh and Chennai-bound buses at the Baiyappanahalli station. However, a transport hub at Baiyappanahalli could have effortlessly tackled this problem. With the first phase of the Namma Metro nearing completion in a few months, isn’t the time just ripe now to reactivate the entire project?

Once the Metro’s underground stretch is complete, Baiyappanahalli will be directly linked to Majestic and beyond, upto Mysuru Road. The current commuter count on the Reach between the terminal and MG Road is bound to skyrocket. It then makes perfect sense for Tirupati or Chennai-bound passengers from say, Vijayanagar, to take the Metro, alight at Baiyappanahalli and take a KSRTC or APSRTC bus at the terminal.

Shuttle service
A shuttle bus service could easily link the Metro station with the KSRTC terminal. Couldn’t this be achieved without a multi-crore investment? Perhaps. At least, as sources say, the MDs of KSRTC and BMRCL have now begun talking about it, in the high-powered committee meetings. The active involvement of the BMTC management too could work out a makeshift connectivity model until a fully functional transport hub takes shape.

But the total collapse of orderly traffic near the KR Puram bridge has injected a sense of urgency to the entire debate on a transport hub. Once operational, a multi-modal hub of this size could serve as a template for similar projects. First in line should be the much-talked about but much-delayed hub in Majestic, a grand project linking the KSRTC and BMTC bus stations with the Metro interchange and Bengaluru City railway station.