Bengaluru: The Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) has installed digital passenger information system (PIS) boards at 500 bus shelters in the city, an official said Tuesday. The project, valued at an estimated Rs 40 crore, is part of the Central government’s Nirbhaya scheme.
The tender for the project was called prior to Covid-19 but had hit minor roadblocks due to the pandemic, Chief Traffic Manager Prabhakar Reddy told DH.
“The maintenance of the digital boards will be done by an agency with the BMTC,” Reddy said. “Power is the primary pre-requisite. These have been installed in the shelters where there is proper power supply.”
The signboards display the bus number, route, destination and estimated time of arrival (ETA) both in English and in Kannada.
“The entire system is automated,” the Chief Traffic Manager said, adding that the tracking works similar to the Namma BMTC app launched recently as all these are part of the same project.”
These boards are different from the ones installed earlier at the Traffic Transit Management Centres (TTMC), Reddy said. “They were installed by another agency for advertisements, along with displaying the bus timings,” he said.
However, they were not real-time and only displayed the static time as per our timetable. In the current digital boards, the live buses are tracked, he added.
In August this year, reports indicated a hiccup in the project’s implementation, stemming from one of the agencies involved in a public-private partnership with the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) for maintaining the shelters, which had yet to give its agreement.
“The issues were subsequently resolved as the installations are complete now,” the official said.
(Published 24 October 2023, 20:18 IST)