The Panaji Smart City Development has neared the final stages for the rollout of a new wholly electric bus system for the city of Panaji with expanded routes that are set to displace the existing bus system in the city.
To date, the Smart City fathers have yet to fully and formally announce their plans but in terms of preparedness the buses are already here, the routes have been mapped out, the buses have been fitted with the route mapping systems and if rolled out successfully will hope to be an improvement on the existing system that the city is saddled with and has been so since inception.
Goa is one of the only state capital cities that does not have a state-run urban mass bus-based transit system and instead relies on a network of privately run buses that traverse a handful of routes from the bus stand at Patto and travel to various destinations like Miramar, Dona Paula, Taleigao, Santa Cruz, Bambolim etc, besides also the Altinho route.
Attempts were made in the past to have more convenient routes to help bring people from the surrounding villages to the city as well as connect the city itself for people to traverse within it. However, over the years these attempts have either failed to take off or met with losses forcing the operators including the KTC to abandon such initiatives.
Even today several crucial areas of the main city like St Inez, Bhatulem, Mala etc are not directly connected with the main business areas of the city forcing the residents to use their own private vehicles to quickly get to the city for work or business. This has in turn added to the congestion of the city besides being a highly inefficient way to help people move about in the city.
It is also one of the primary reasons why people who travel to the city for work or business prefer to bring their own vehicles -- so that they can later use the vehicle to quickly hop between locations within the city on the cheap. Were efficient transport within the city available, most of such users would be more than happy to use public transport to come to the city.
However, for this latest initiative to succeed, the powers that be need to take all stakeholders into confidence when rolling out the routes. This needs the political leadership to step up and make their plans official as well as negotiate with the existing bus operators with the view to either bring them on board to rehabilitate them instead of leaving them in the lurch, as currently seems the plan.
The present plan is lacking transparency, and there is no clear indication of when it will be rolled out, and what cost, whether in a phased manner or directly and most importantly what of the existing operators who have been running the business all their lives.
Failure to do so would mean the present plan is at risk of facing the fate of all those plans before it -- failing to take off. There is no doubt that the city needs a more efficient transit system but it shouldn’t come at the cost of the existing operators who have been serving the city for decades -- certainly by attempting to maximise their profits but have been there nonetheless. The operators also have the political clout to scuttle plans drawn up by bureaucrats who haven’t taken them on board during the brainstorming process.
The government and the city goers and its residents also cannot afford to lose an opportunity to give the city a long-awaited overhaul in its transport system as failure would mean a dead end for a better transport system. It is imperative that the political class takes ownership of this plan, and takes all stakeholders into confidence so that everyone is a winner.
