I had in mind the example set by Bhaskar Bhat, the managing director of Titan, who started to use the Volvo AC bus service to the new Bengaluru airport years ago and still uses it frequently. The quality of the service, run by Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (yes, state-owned!) remains super. A 35-km journey will cost you upwards of Rs 200, a taxi ride Rs 600 plus. The city has no metered taxis.
Private firms now offer incentives to their executives to take this bus, saying it offers, above all, a safe journey. Some celebrities have started to use the service for the same safety reason. Ministers or senior civil servants have not started doing so.
People usually think that it takes more time to travel by bus. Not so if you know how to adjust your use. In Bengaluru, get off or get on to the airport bus at the Hebbal flyover, thus doing 25 km of the 35 km route from the city centre by bus along a new highway where the bus flies as fast as law-abiding private cars at a cost of Rs 170.
In Kolkata, believe me, things are as good or in some way better. The Volvo AC bus I used, run under contract with the state transport authorities by Royal Cruiser, who run posh inter-city bus services, took me as fast as a private car would. And the just-under-20-km distance cost Rs 50! A taxi ride would have cost Rs 200.
There are two minuses. The bus is a bit crowded as it skirts the IT hub at Salt Lake and so gets a lot of techie commuters. But as soon as I got in and struggled with my overnight bag, a young man got up to give me his seat. I thereafter read a newspaper in utmost comfort for the next 45 minutes. The second minus - frequency is only once every half hour.
I had two experiences in Delhi. Since it now has the airport metro, there is no AC bus service to the city. But I was determined to try out what Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) had to offer in the post-Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission low-floor-bus era. It works only if you are a bit of a bus veteran as I am.
I first took a low-floor red DTC express bus to Dhaula Kuan for an under-half-hour pleasant journey for Rs 25. Yes, even in Delhi someone got up and gave me his seat. There I had to wait for half an hour to get a bus to Nizamuddin, where I was headed. This took me another half hour and cost Rs 25. It worked well for me, but then you have to be a bus veteran and have minimal luggage.
The new experience was taking the airport metro on the return journey. The line stretches over 23 km, but I did a slightly shorter Shivaji Stadium-to-Aerocity journey in about 12 minutes at a cost of Rs 50. The look and feel is 21st century. If you are headed for Terminal 3, then you get off the train at the terminal itself. To go to Terminal 1, I had to take a bus for a 20-minute office-hour ride that cost Rs 30.
This second leg took away a bit from the first leg. Also, if you are not anywhere near the New Delhi railway station-Dhaula Kuan-airport route, then you have to use a taxi, which for my 17-km journey would have cost around Rs 300.
Mumbai is a little different from the rest. There is too much money in India's commercial capital and its logistics complex. There is no AC bus service that will take as much time as a taxi ride costing Rs 300 (non-AC) from the Fort area. Mumbai still has great black-and-yellow metered taxis that are easy to hail and hop on. A private AC taxi ride can be for Rs 450. Mumbai, of course, has an intensively used local train service, but it is not practical to take a hugely crowded ride to Santa Cruz and thence by auto to the airport.
My point is, things have started moving. The way forward is to be like Bhaskar Bhat and where an option does not exist, executives and businessmen should put their heads together to evolve a business model for comfortable, safe and reasonably quick public transport.