Bengaluru has a lot of flights landing and taking off in the early hours of the morning.  But if passengers are looking for Vayu Vajra buses, they will find that at precisely the hours when many international flights land or take off (and in order to get to and from the airport at the right time), there will be no Volvo buses plying.

Let me take one example. British Airways out of Bengalurue departs at 7 am. This means that passengers must be at the airport by 5 am at the latest, preferably half-an-hour earlier.

Let’s say the passenger lives in south Bangalore and wants to take the bus from KuVemPu Nagara (BTM Layout) bus terminus. Here are the departure timings for KIAS-12 from BTM Layout: 00.55, 04,30, 05.10, 05.45, 06.20.

The state time taken for the journey is two hours.

This means that a passenger must either take a bus and reach the airport at 3 am, and spend three more hours added on to a possible long transatlantic flight… or s/he cannot take a bus at all.

In the same way, Air France into Bengalure arrives at 01.10 am.  Here are the timings of the bus from the airport to BTM Layout: 05.40, 06.20, 06.55, 07.35

That is, allowing an hour (or even two) to come out of Customs and Immigration, a traveller who’s completed a long and tiring flight has to wait until 5.40 am to get a bus.

When I asked why the buses which left earlier had been stopped, I was told that ‘there is no demand”. If BMTC does not run any buses at the appropriate times, how will there be any demand? 

Surely, BMTC can work with international arrival and departure schedules to have buses arriving and departing at convenient hours for international passengers, which is one of the stated aims of the Vayu Vajura service. 

At present, passengers are forced to take cabs for lack of proper bus schedules. Get on the act, BMTC!

I tried to get the email id of the Managing Director of BMTC to email him these details. The website says, the M.D. is Dr Ekroop Caur, I A S… but does not give any email id! Neither the M.D nor the Directors have provided mobile numbers, either.

Obviously, no one should be able to contact Dr Caur except people in BMTC… the travelling public cannot have any contact information.

As long as BMTC itself forces international travellers to take cabs, how is our traffic and pollution scenario going to get solved by buses?