By: Anoop Varghese Kuriappuram, Executive Member, Prathidhwani, Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram.
This article is written in the context of Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram. It can be applied to any where in kerala though. Technopark is the biggest IT park in Asia, it employs about 45,000 people directly and about 5,000 indirectly. It is unclear, how all these people commute to work. But we can roughly estimate that about 5,000 people come by cars and about 10,000 people come by two wheelers, there are roughly 35,000 odd people who commute by other means. Even if JNNURM Volvo services are present, they seem to be either over crowded or gets erratic timing due to heavy and unpredictable traffic in city. Absence of dependable bus transportation is the prime driver of making people depend on private personal transport, which costly and causes pollution, traffic block and parking space crunch.If we can make at least half of 35,000 people use KSRTC and on an average if a person spends like 30 rupees, revenue of KSRTC will be increased by 5 lakh per day. It will be a huge relief for travel pains of techies. Before coming to this idea, let us look at some facts.
1. Technopark employees or Tekki’s are not alien creatures, who will travel only in Volvo AC buses.
2. There are many people who use KSRTC , railways and auto for their daily commute, also various combinations of the above . there are many low income earning people like restaurant workers, security staff, cleaning staff etc, who are forced to walk a minimum 1 kilometer from kazhakkoottam which is the nearest bus stop. It clearly indicates need of a people friendly transportation system.
3. Most of the technopark staff come to work in between 8 am to 11 am and leave from work between 5 pm and 8 pm. There will be less rush in buses, if not in other schedule.
4. In technopark phase -2 campuses of Infosys,UST global are present, people in byepass find it hard to board buses in byepass, as they are full already from venjaramood. In peak hours, if buses can be started from kazhakkoottam from 8, 8:30, 9, 9:30 , 10 in byepass route, it will be a great relief.
5. long distance services are ideal in weekends ( Friday and Monday), there needs to be new buses to thodupuzha via Pala and Ernakulam via Alleppy. Rerouting of Piravom Super express via Technopark on Friday also will be a great relief.
6. In all working days, it will be great to have limited stop fast passengers from adoor depot and alleppey depots to technopark. The schedule should be such that, it should reach technopark before 9 am and their should a return service back by 6 pm. Now many people are waiting in Venjaramood, for about 30 minutes to catch buses to kazhakkoottam/technopark.
But first and foremost thing is to re-route KSRTC services via attingal/sreekaryam through technopark in peak hours in every 10 minutes, it may be 1 km extra and 5 minutes extra running time. Revenue for KSRTC and relief for techies are much beyond description by this initiative.
We have submitted this proposals to KSRTC though various channels like sutharya keralam and grievance portals but for no avail (19471/2013, 28296/2013, GOVKL/E/2011/00094).Only KSRTC employees and elected representatives can solve this. We, prathidhwani – organization of technopark employees are submitting this with a positive hope.let KSRTC reach new heights!!
