Indore has become the first city in the country to put in place a fleet of 53 modern low-floor buses equipped with GPS and computerised ticket-vending machines. In two days, the bus stops will have electronic sign boards to show the status of the buses.

The new Tata Starbuses have the same tariff of Rs 3- 12 as that ot the old Nagar Sewa mini buses that pack people like sardines. The perpetual story of public transport losses seems to be over. Since February this year, when the buses started running, the municipal corporation has made Rs 1 crore profit.

The city is celebrating the new transport system run on private-public partnership.”There was just the Nagar Sewa until some months back. Rude staff and overcrowded buses made going out a nightmare. I always ended up taking an auto or just driving down myself. But look at these buses. The conductors and drivers are so well-behaved, there is separate seating and exit for women, the bus comes on time and has so much leg room,’’ says Ramneek Kaur, a housewife.

The man behind the move, Vivek Aggarwal, District Collector and Executive Director of Indore City Transport Services Limited (ICTSL), says: “Indore’s transport system was in complete chaos in June 2005 when I took over as collector. There were no bus stops, no fixed bus routes, Nagar Sewa buses just stopped anywhere they felt like. Having spent some time in Europe I was fascinated by their bus system. We identified 350 bus stops in the city before surveying all routes.’’

Aggarwal chose the joint-venture route. No one believed it would work, says Aggarwal. “But once our first few buses rolled out in February this year and elicited such great public response, there was no looking back.”

The buses are colour-coded according to routes, the staff are trained in etiquette by a management agency, the buses run from 7 am to 11 pm and are out the next day washed, cleaned and air-dried from the yard after ICTSL staff checks them everyday.

The collector says Indore will have 96 such buses by the end of the year and a fleet of 500 in five years. With another Rs 98 crore coming to Indore under the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission, the city plans to start construction of designated bus lanes for a complete Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) with the help of IIT Delhi.

The national Capital, Delhi, has been discussing the scheme for four years and just about managed to sneak in six buses last November. And it took Indore just nine months to put the scheme on tracks.

There will soon be more lessons for big cities from Aggawal’s Indore. Next in line is a dial-a-cab service to replace the 15-year-old tempos on the Indore roads. While Nagar Sewas have not yet been phased out, Aggarwal hopes the market will force them out.

The word is spreading fast. Indore is now being consulted by Amritsar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Jaipur, Kota, Udaipur, Rourkela and Raipur. Soon a World Bank team will be here to study the scheme.