Passengers boarding a bus at Master Canteen Square in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Nov. 9: Here’s some good news for city commuters. The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) and the public works department (PWD) plan to construct 55 bus bays across the city.

While the corporation will construct the passenger shelters, the PWD will construct the bus parking places and a link road from the main road that would connect the bay in front of the passenger shelters.

Construction of 22 bus bays will be undertaken in the first phase. More bus bays will be constructed later in a phase-wise manner.

Municipal commissioner Vishal Kumar Dev today said with road expansion and other development works undergoing at many places across the city, commuters who depend on inter-city buses and city buses were suffering the most for lack of proper bus bays. Now, with the City Management Group identifying spots for the proposed bus bays, the commuters would have easy access to the public transport system.

With the city buses connecting almost all corners of the capital, Cuttack and Puri, the new bus bays would also help the passengers immensely, he said.

“We will advertise asking for expression of interests for designing the passenger shelters. This notification will be made public within a week. All the passenger shelters near the bus bays will have uniform design and people-friendly features. They will be constructed in public-private-partnership (PPP) mode. The display areas on each of the shelters will be uniform and there should not be any deviation in the design process for the city,’’ Dev said.

In the past, the corporation had constructed about 50 bus stops across the city in PPP mode. However, without proper planning and future implications in mind, they have now been either lying unused or demolished during road expansion. While more than 15 such bus stops were violating traffic norms, many were obstructing traffic by being either on roads or near various squares, which invited protests from the traffic police. Some bus stops are even being used by encroachers.

Interestingly, the civic authority does not have any official documents regarding the execution of those bus stops in PPP mode.

However, a senior official of the corporation explained that the 55 new bus bays were planned as per the approval of the City Management Group and every aspects of traffic rules, road construction guidelines and future expansion features were being taken into consideration.

“The purpose of the project is not to collect revenue through the PPP approach, but to provide adequate support and facilities for the commuters who are availing the city bus service under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. The corporation is all set to provide better public transport system to the historic city,’’ he said.

Earlier, the operators of the city bus service demanded bus bays on several occasions. After more than one year of the launch of the bus service, bus bays are yet to come up.

The operators alleged that they were not able to place the signage indicating the routes and bus numbers plying in various directions.

“Construction of the bus bays will help the commuters enjoy better bus service,’’ said a senior official.

Ratikant Sahu, a student of Utkal University, said: “Waiting for a bus at any place in the city is a painful experience as most of the bus stops do not have any roof. At places, even if the structure is there, the buses and the commuters do not use it.

“Without proper bus bays, the buses are even parking on roads to lift passengers, creating traffic problems.’’

“I hope this new venture of the municipal corporation and the PWD will help the city’s residents and, especially the students of various institutions, as Bhubaneswar is fast emerging as a major education hub in the entire eastern Indian region,’’ Sahu said.