BMLTA Bill passed, proposes unified transport authority

The objective of the bill is to bring all the public transportation services in the city under one umbrella like it is in London

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: On Tuesday, the Karnataka Assembly passed the Bengaluru Metropolitan Land Transport Authority (BMLTA) Bill, with the objective to bring all the public transportation services in the city under one roof. This includes auto rickshaws, public buses and the metro railway, with the proposed authority covering an area of 279 square kilometres.  

Currently, a handful of government agencies – BMTC for buses, BMRCL for metro and the municipal body BBMP along with the Karnataka Transport Department, hold the responsibility of regulating transport related matters of intra-city travel.

Transport activists have consistently complained that the lack of an umbrella authority led to poor coordination among the various authorities, leading to poor traffic management and public transport facilities in the city. The BMLTA will now be the decision maker for all the policy related matters concerning urban mobility and will work towards integrating all modes of transport.

According to Karnataka Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister J C Madhuswamy, “this bill seeks to supplement the National Urban Transport Policy (NUTP), which lays down a framework for the integration of various functions of institutions and departments to enable a holistic transport planning”.

Backing the bill, Chief Minister Bommai said, “Bengaluru did not grow in a planned manner where the growth was on one side while planning was on the other. The roads did not widen but everyday 5,000 new vehicles were added to the city. The city has 1. 25 crore people and 1.04 crore vehicles, but in the next five years, the number of vehicles here will overtake the city population”.

He further informed, “Eight surrounding towns and 110 villages were acquired; imagine the infrastructure of a town and village into which large traffic is going”.  Underlining the need for a scientific study on the traffic system, Bommai informed that the Bengaluru-headquartered Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has been tasked to do the study.

The government has started to decongest the city’s entry points such as Goraguntepalya and Hebbal, and has put an ADGP level officer in charge of the process, referring to the recently appointed IPS officer M A Saleem, the Chief Minister informed.

Citing the example of the Hebbal flyover, Bommai said that the travel time taken to pass the flyover has reduced from 20 minutes to 7-8 minutes due to a curb on movement of heavy vehicles, a system also being followed in several other places.  

Bommai also said that the government is studying global examples to tackle traffic, for example, traffic jams in Shanghai despite having high-speed trains to reach the airport in 30 minutes. He has also said that a big traffic command centre will be ready in a year and it will be using over 7,000 cameras and AI to monitor violations.

According to the bill, the Chief Minister will be the ex-officio chairperson while the Bengaluru incharge minister and the transport minister are the vice chairpersons. It has also proposed to make experts in the area of urban mobility and representatives of civil society as its members.

The BMLTA's duties and functions will be to promote seamless mobility through sustainable urban transport and integration of land use and transport planning in the Urban Mobility Region by preparing and updating the Comprehensive Mobility Plan (CMP). It will also review and approve the City Mobility Investment Programme prepared in accordance with the CMP.