I have been strongly appreciating the wonderful initiative of the current administration when they unravelled the Pink Bus (aka) No-Fee travel for Women in the state. It is simply a laudable initiative and could be considered as a role model for other transport corporations across the globe. No doubt in the same. Since we have data regarding this scheme for an year and a half now and based on the usage patterns of the same I have done an informal study in my capacity and would like to submit the same to the Transport Department on a good citizenship initiative.
I have tried to ensure the study not just restricts itself to subsidised and/or No-Fee travel for Women but for other reservations and related topics as well.
- We need to implement some kind of identification for travelling women preferably I could suggest an Aadhar based token system with a limited number of travels per day basis. Technically it is called Fair Usage Policy (FUP) and you can see this term often with telecom companies these days so that a section of the percentage does not overwhelm the available resources meant for a broader mass. This also ensures other variants of the transport corporation are also not left to ply empty.
The reason for suggesting this is because I have been observing some women just recklessly travelling to and from between next stops ferrying commercial goods for the shops run by their family men. And because of this genuine women who need to commute feel the buses are unduly overloaded and need to shell extra bucks for non-Bus routes. - We also need to curtail and/or impose a FUP or constraint on travel authority for school and college students. I have a few recommendations here for the same too.
- The travel authority for these people should be valid only along with the educational institution ID card.
- Additionally the travel should be allowed only on days when the educational institutions are functional besides only for pickup and drop times for the schools (+/- 2 hours). This is to avoid bunking of classes by students and would ensure near 100% attendance by the students.
- The number of passes for Senior Citizens are very less compared to the above. This needs to be significantly increased along with apportioning more seats for them in the buses. Ideally an awareness among passengers to voluntarily give up seats when a Senior Citizen boards the bus would be appreciated. Additionally it would be better if Senior Citizen passes are made to be distributed by conductors itself instead of forcing them to visit the so-called counters which are often painfully crowded and they are made to stand and wait in serpentine long queues exposed to hot weather.
- Any of the subsidised or No-Fee travel should restrict from ferrying heavy luggages. The luggages if any should be charged. This is to avoid commercial exploitation of transport services that I have described in point number 1 above. (vide supra)
- Hoarding and Blocking of Seats by Women and/or Students should be penalized strictly. This presents a very distasteful situation and ugly scenes onboard the buses. The seats must be strictly on a First Come First Served basis. Ideally I would also recommend scrapping of reservations of seats earmarking for Women which would ensure Gender Equality. I hear your comments that this could mean Eve-Teasing complaints will rise. And that is the way we can identify potential pranksters (Eve-Teasers) who could be handed over to Law Enforcement for prosecution.
A copy of the note has been registered with the office of Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for requisite feasibility analysis and implementation