No tickets...please!!!

No tickets...please!!!

First time when I heard that I was taken back. What do you think it would be? When I got into BMTC bus, I gave a five rupee coin and asked the conductor a ticket for the stop I needed to go. The stop I had to go is actually the next stop which is a little more than the walking distance. The ticket charge was 3 rupees.

He promptly gave me the change and moved without giving the ticket. I asked him for the ticket and the response was "NO TICKETS". This is when I found the conductor had given a rupee more than the actual balance. I came to know that this is a practice (???) that's been followed. Should I tell that my 2 rupees had actually gone into his pocket? The worst thing is that I was denied a ticket even after I asked for the ticket by giving another rupee. The reply was simple - "this is not a stage and wont give tickets". If that stop is not a stage, then why are the buses stopping at that stop? Also, some conductors stare and at times literally scold murmuring on asking for a ticket. Hmm... so that's a nice treatment for no fault of ours, right?

This prompted me to check the info on the number of buses that BMTC ply daily and found it in wikipedia (around 25th Apr 2008) and this is an excerpt from that page:

Every day(as on 12-01-2008), we
* Operate 4723 schedules

* Deploy a fleet of 4829 buses

* Make 66665 trips

* Perform 10.48 Lakhs Service Kilometres

* Carry more than 37.00 Lakhs Passengers

* Earn around Rs.220.11 lakhs and

* Pay Rs. 12.11 lakh to the Government towards Motor Vehicle tax
[check the link for more info on BMTC: http://www.bmtcinfo.com/english/atpresent.htm; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangalore_Metropolitan_Transport_Corporation]

I am sure that he is not the only person who is doing such a thing and this is not the only route where this is happening. Now, lets think of a hypothetical case. Just out of the 66K and odd trips, consider that during only 10% of these trips (I have a feeling that it would be minimun 70%) they dont give the tickets. This means that around 7000 trips they are not giving tickets. Also say for example that in each trip they dont give the Rs.3 tickets to 50 people in one trip and take 2 rupees from them. This means they are getting Rs. 100 per trip. On whole they get approximatley Rs.70000 per day. Does this not mean Rs.70000 LOSS to BMTC for one single day?

When I just gave a thought process on the cause for this, I could think of a few things - not even once I have seen the checking inspector & co; the public also needs to be blamed as they are the ones who encouraged the conductors across Banglaore to do this and I really dont know what they are going to do with a rupee saved per trip. They are not realizing about what they are losing indirectly. I really wonder if this is not known to anyone of the BMTC officials. Also, think it is high time that BMTC takes some step to stop this before the conductors start this habit in Volvos and in turn boost its profit to a new high by making sure that conductors DO issue tickets!!!

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