BANGALORE: Many people brave the burning sun and rains to catch buses to reach their destination, you might have noticed many unused bus shelters in the city. It is an irony that many bus stops have more than two bus shelters while some have no bus shelters at all.Bus shelters are erected jointly by the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation and the city traffic police.Bangalore city has about 700 bus shelters for about 2,000 bus stops. The figures keep changing as and when some roads are made one-way or spilt into two-way etc. Out of the 700 bus shelters, 622 are directly erected by the BBMP and revenue is collected for the advertisements which the bus shelters bare. The remaining ones are erected by donors and other companies on courtesy.When City Express spoke to Y M Ramachandramurthy, BBMP Deputy Commissioner (Advertisements), he said, “BBMP has earned more than 13 crore out of the rent and advertisement taxes laid on the bus shelters. We cannot remove the unused bus shelters until the contract of advertisements come to an end.” For instance, there are six bus shelters at Chinnaswamy Stadium and at Indian Express bus-stops. These bus shelters are hardly seen with people. And on the flip side, areas like Mysore Circle, Toll Gate, Jayanagar 2nd Block (In front of Ramakrishna Hospital) and some at Magadi Road do not have any shelter at all.“We are forced to wait in open areas without any protection from the rain. We find it very difficult to bare with the dust and other elements while waiting for buses without shelters,” said Sharath Kumar, a student with National College.Sharing with us the problems of re-locating the bus shelters Ramachandramurthy added, “We are facing a case regarding the advertisement policy which is pending at the High Court. Due to which we have stalled the process of shifting 150 bus shelters which were approved in February the previous year. Even we have received proposals from traffic department to re-locate about 160 bus shelters in the city.”When we spoke to Professor M N Sreehari, advisor to Government of Karnataka on Traffic and Infrastructure he said, “More than the revenue derived out of advertisements, the BBMP must look into the safety of people. Since they derive revenue they cannot have more bus shelters at one bus stop or they cannot have more since they are donated. They can always use the donors money on some other cause which are really needed by people.”
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