Another Bus. But not another route

PUNE, INDIA: Cities, congestion, crimes, capacity chaos, empty routes, passenger queues, illiterate drivers, tech-savvy but hurried passengers, poor infrastructures, merciless deadlines, and a typical urban day. Indian transport system is understandably full of tug-of-war contradictions.

It's easy to compare our commuting woes unfavourably with a western country while we struggle with the quintessential woes of a city dweller. To imagine what a rural citizen undergoes, is way out of the scope of this moment at least.

But what may be scooped inside in this moment is how some people, tech-fraternity business folks and some enthusiastic entrepreneurs have started attempting to go farther with these comparisons.

If a city somewhere abroad can have a smooth, suave transport regimen, why not a city in India?

Probably a question that honked loud in the mind of Patwardhan Patwardhan, CMD, Patwardhan Purple Mobility Solutions, a provider of mobility solutions like City and Intercity buses, Bus and Car rentals, Corporate and school bus services.

That's may be when he decided to rejig his transport fleet with an avant-garde word: Cloud.

Boarding the band-wagon early

"Rapid urbanization has generated corresponding increase in the demand for travel as seen in the sharp rise in ownership of private vehicles. However, public transport infrastructure development has not kept pace with the increase in travel demand. On the other hand, the share of public transport vehicles i.e. Buses, has declined in the same period to roughly one per cent of all registered vehicles, down from double digits a few decades ago."

Specially now that phase II of JnNURM would be carried out over the next five years with an estimated spend of $ 40 billion, there's a lot of potential when it comes to improving the tarmac of this sector on Indian roads.

Enters Samir Bodas CEO Icertis, whose confidence with Cloud is clearly palpable. Icertis, a provider of enterprise solutions in the Microsoft Cloud and focused on building cloud native products is eyeing the exact lane with its focus to transform the passenger travel experience by public transport in India. As it claims, Icertis has developed and implemented a state-of-the art city bus planning and operations management system in India. It has already deployed this advanced technology solution built on Microsoft's Windows Azure for Patwardhan Purple Mobility Solutions.

 

This solution encompasses a lot of other circuits under these IT fly-overs. It can be about the role of next generation IT solutions in enhancing public utility services in India, with special focus on Public Transport Sector. Or about how passengers can check bus schedules, route details, estimated travel time and fares, bus timings, as well as traffic information both online and on mobile devices-all in real time, shopping details, historical facts. There is also that possible social Impact, as these partners add, with safer and reliable public transport system, reduced emissions due to better fuel efficiency and vehicle maintenance.

With a public transport management product, Bodas is bullish on this platform built on Cloud, with Microsoft Azure. The team has tailored it for Indian conditions and is leaning progressively on implementation curves. Underlining the customised-for-India flavour, he adds how so many changes with reference to India have to be taken into account and that's what their focus has been. "The context here is different when we factor in regulatory, congestion-related or urbanization-specific variations. For instance, the way to make money in this business is not just about Topline but about controlling operations tightly and that's where IT and strong softwares being critical."

IT, huh?

Not a plug-and-play scenario to sketch honestly when one is thinking of buses, and that too for India.

Bumpy tracks

For instance, how would one ensure that those ultra-smart features of an IT overhaul are not an unwieldy gear to grab for many drivers and on-ground employees, specially when most of them are not necessarily educated enough, and at times even illiterate.

Do you swipe off all those overwhelming tech-transformers and instead work on pulling out visual rabbits out of a product's hat? 

Yes, is the surprising answer that erupts simultaneously from the customer and the service-architects.

The system has been developed with a lot of detail-oriented design mindset and usability focus. It is pretty nuanced for handling-ease, as one can gather from the confidence with which both Patwardhan and Bodas demonstrate the visual flavours, icon-based operating ease and lot of stocks, stiles, and other visual props that various dashboards have.

Horses for courses has been taken to a new level, it seems.

And like a good equestrian, the strategy has not forgotten human angle as the new system is saddled on to the entire fleet.  Everyone in the operations, from a driver to conductor to a middle-level executive to top manager; has a personalised and different dashboard.

The system may be all codes and algorithms or whatever tech-speak one can blurt, but in essence, it consequentially aspires to deliver some goals that Patwardhan envisages keenly.

On-time scheduling, in-bus infotainment, mobile alerts for any delays, GPS enablement and matching routes optimally to people needs are some such deliverables he expects out of this deployment.

Like Patwardhan lets on candidly, when one tries to embed technology in a scenario not so used to it, challenges leap all around. "The last three to four years has shown me how initial resistance is bound to happen be it a GPS idea or anything else. Training and proper orientation helps but what works is some insight into actual situations."

That's why customization has not been relegated towards the backseat here.  In another place, unlike India, conductor module may be an irrelevant need. But it is an important piece in India, he explains. "Conductor checking systems, or tapping the uniqueness of each city from permit requirements for certain hours to route limitations; all these have to be incorporated." The system ensures working on many other goals like how can drivers give more mileage, or statutory compliance for rosters, or allocation of duties.

It is allocated based on the constraints, scenarios, resources and schedule maps decided to deliver optimum allocation of all resources and vehicles.

"Inter-city and intra-city transport are two different scenarios altogether. Earnings per kilometer become challenging while expenditures remain the same. Depending on the load factor, passenger requirements at a particular time, peak time graphs, one has to schedule optimally. For daily commuters, it can mean a lot of difference. The buses should be provided in such a fashion that scale, traffic patterns, routes, speed variance for peak times etc are all considered properly." He illustrates.

Men at work

Cloud and Buses sound a good duet so far. Unless of course the not so melodious word called ‘outage' spins things out of the rhythm. Something that is definitely not a good sight to spot on a daily-bus' operations' dashboard. Cause to worry?

Bodas juggles the question with another one. Any utility will have outages, but the question is to realize the trade-off between cost, efficiency and ubiquity; he argues. So far, he acknowledges that no major outage-impact has been witnessed by him.

"Outage is always a possibility, but there are SLAs, and we ensure smooth operations as we work closely with a specialist team. It is essentially a weight age of minor outages once in a while Vs the big advantage of elasticity."

Patwardhan quips here how there are advantages and disadvantages of every technology. "If not for Cloud, a business sized like we are, would not have gone for a big service scope like this. Big operators can afford big infrastructures but businesses of our scale can not invest so much in capex.

This is an opportunity to at least start at some level. Why should I not grab the chance of saving form investing in hardware and instead put that amount into buses?" It turns out that people and businesses are willing to take an outage-hit once in a while in lieu of benefits.

For now, one would love to see if Cloud's magic can be delivered on Indian roads and routes. It is not a system devoid of potholes. Counting initial challenges Patwardhan wonders about integration with hardware like GPS, biometric pieces, Oracle Financials etc for real-time data as some starting-point red flags.

But with the ambition to provide a world-class service on Indian roads, this private transport player is all buoyant about pushing the pedal and stepping on the IT gas, even further. "Buses have a different connotation in India and it is usually because of the experience-moment-of-truth. We plan to change that."

Belts on

That inevitably brings up the moot word called ‘safety' with the unfortunate state of events on our very roads that the nation has witnessed recently.

As to what new and really radical can such tech-enabled fleets provide, Patwardhan anticipates the impact of certain features that can help equipping safety factor better. Like real-time monitoring of unscheduled stops if any; alerts when uauthorised drivers or conductors come onboard; unreasonable delay-popped alerts; exception-reporting; instant communication to authorities; RFID on employee IDs, biometric systems etc.

In-bus monitoring - buses can be located from anywhere and operational efficiency like scheduling managing driver's schedule and maintenance of the buses also ensure less chances of having any kind of failures/accidents." Bodas reassures.

Lots on the way apparently and from what the first milestone signals, the drive ahead has to be a pretty ambitious one.

That's may be one windshield where ‘to travel is better than to arrive' just won't do.