IT TO THE RESCUE OF STUs

State Transport Undertakings all over India barring one or two have been incurring heavy losses every year to the public exchequer. They are generally not professionally managed. And State keeps them supporting them as they are public utility services. STUs are typically characterised by excess manpower, absence of freedom to fix the reasonable fares, gross negligence in collecting fares, typical bureaucratic working and corruption in materials management.

Let us take an example of over manning in Delhi Transport Corporation.It has about 32,000 employees for a bus fleet of 2000 buses and also to take care of requirements of conductor for about 2600 buses of Private owned buses. Labor cost in DTC is about 50% of its total expenditure and 65 % of its earnings.

Therefore any cost saving and profitability excerise has to address the manpower as the basic issue. Information Technology can not only solve the problem of the excess manpower but also improve the quality of the service and customer satisfaction. Many of the existing manpower can be actually deployed with skill upgradation. Most of the STUs in India have accepted the roll of IT in their operation as the guiding factor towards increase in their profitability. Some applications like computerisation of bus passes,automatic ticketing, computerisation of the pay role etc have been introduced but a comprehensive plan is lacking in almost all STUs.

Following is an attempt to illustrate the various IT applications under an IT plan which are under various stages of implementation at DTC:

The main functions of a transport undertaking are route planning &scheduling, management of operation of depots and terminals, management of hired and rented buses, management of buses and spare parts and coordination with various agencies like STA(State Transport Authority), MCD, Police , Govt., etc.

The route planning and scheduling of bus trips on a route are done manually. The manual system of planning and scheduling should be understood to know its limitations and to understand how IT could help it. Bus routes are planned on the basis of demand, supply and overall objectives. Supply (availability) of the buses is already known and demand is calculated by estimating traffic load through O/D( Origin-Destination) manual exercise, future growth planned for the city and traffic pattern during various times of the day. O/D exercise is generally done every 10 th year. Planning of the bus routes is also limited to overall objectives like buses to be deployed on socio- political basis for certain routes, etc. Scheduling of the bus trips is dependent on the traffic pattern, overall objectives and earnings.

It is clear now that collection of data like O/D, revenue earnings, traffic pattern ,etc through manual system can not be done under realistic time frame and also they can not be accurate. Information Technology helps the process of planning and scheduling through the introduction of integrated GPS and smart card system. DTC has adopted this integrated approach. Projects known as "Automatic Vehicle and Tracking(Monitoring) system (AVTS) "and "Automatic Fare Collection System (AFCS)" have been launched.

AVTS uses GPS/GIS technology and consists of three parts namely a vehicle mounted equipment(VME), Central Control Station(CCS) and a communication system to connect VME and CCS.VME is always receiving signals from GPS satellites indicating its position in terms of longitude, latitude and altitude. This information is sent by the communication system (in DTC case it is Trunk Radio) to the CCS. VME unit has also a firmware designed and built inside which keeps on displaying the names of the bus stops/terminals/depots on the display system inside the bus and also sends this information to the AFCS smart card equipment installed in the bus.

It means that CCS computer has all the information like route traveled, absolute time at each point of journey and time covered for each lap of the journey for each trip. Besides this , CCS has a big display on which all movements of all moving vehicles can be monitored and then regulated. Such a system shall therefore facilitate to provide on line information about time taken by each trip and helps in dynamic scheduling .

Further, AFCS facilitate on line information about revenue collection on each trip .AFCS is a system to collect fare automatically through smart cards. No paper ticket is issued. It has also three parts. Smart card and readers mounted on vehicle, computer system at depot and the cenrtallised computer system at the clearing house. Smart card in this system shall be common for all the public mass transportation like buses and metro rail and therefore a clearing house is required to account the collection by each transporter.

Smart card reader on each bus is programmed for fare and route for each route/trip. This provides the programmed fare table and therefore when a commuter shows his card to the reader at the entry and exit then the distance traveled is known from AVTS and automatically fare is deducted from his smart card These smart cards are actually like debit cards. At end of each trip, information from readers is downloaded to the depot computer. Data from each depot is then sent to the Central computer of DTC and the clearing house computer.

Therefore AVTS coupled with AFCS providing on line information like traffic pattern. revenue earnings, trip timings can help in dynamic planning and scheduling. However long term planning which needs a different type of inputs can also be benefited with such accurate basic data.

The other big advantage is that a large manpower is not required to manage back office jobs in depot and also less number of conductors is required to collect fare. Back office jobs presently need atleast 50 to 75 men in each depot. DTC has about 32 depots. Back office jobs mainly consist of preparing schedule /trip papers, compiling these papers, liasioning with central scheduling dept., preparing boxes for each conductor, receiving account of tickets issued and collection of fare, accounting of fare, accounting of cash. Liasioning with Accounts dept. at HQ.

The other advantage of automatic fare collection through smart card is that it will enable increment in fare as percentage of the existing fare, which could be related to the cost of price index or any other index. This is not possible in the existing system as increase in 10/20 piase is always ruled out. Such a system will enable STUs to fix the fare every year without actually raising any political hue and cry.

DTC is setting up AVTS as pilot project for 200 buses, funded partly by MIT (Ministry of Information technology). System Requirement Specifications have been finallised, CCS hardware has been procured, trunk radio identified and a trial run on one bus has been done. The pilot testing is expected to be completed by the end of Feb,2002.

AFCS is being set up by DTC through a joint understanding with Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC).The system is expected to be online for 200 buses in 2 depots with the commissioning of Ist phase of Metro project in Delhi.

DTC is also working to provide online information board at ISBT. Information like bus number, route number, departure time, destination station etc will be displayed for about 10 buses at one time departing from ISBT bus terminals either inside or on the ring road for the convince of passengers coming out of Metro station. DTC is already operating computerised enquiry system and had put all its information on its Webster including applications forms for the bus passes.

Management of Depot operation is other important function of a transport company. Management of traffic( ticketing, control and scheduling), workshop, store and personnel and administration at depot make composite depot management. As brought out earlier, AVTS shall take care of depot level scheduling and the linkage of smart card attendance system to AVTS shall automatise the control operations at depot level. AFCS system shall completely automatise the ticketing operations.

With the additional computerisation of materials and maintenance functions, the workshop and stores functions get automatise. DTC is implementing an materials and management computerised system which integrating the following functions

All above automatisation and compueteristion helps STUs to make more buses available at one time on the road. DTC has estimated that with the integrated material and maintenance computeristion at least 5% more buses can be outsheded. Which means 200 buses out of 2000 buses. Rough estimates indicate that with averaging earnings of Rs.3500/day/bus ,DTC could extra earn 7,00,000/- per day. This is besides the savings on account of reduction in the inventory cost and also savings on account of less local purchases. The online costing also give an idea of the viability of the in-house workshops enabled repairs.

 

Before summing, a summary of the status of the computerization in various STU s is given below:

SN

STU

APPLICATION

1

Andhra STRC

Depot computerisation, Pay Roll, Financial and materials Accounting, Ticket bookings, Inventory Management.

2

Assam STC

Financial and materials accounting, Ticketing system

3

Brihan Mumbai Electric ST

Ticketing System, Depot Management, Personnel Information System, Pay Roll,

4

Bihar STRC

Statistical works

5

Chandigarh TU

Various branches of CTU

6

Delhi DTC

Pay Roll, Personnel Information System, Financial and materials accounting, Bus Pass System, Ticketing System, Tyre Performance, Bus Information System & MIS.

7

Gujrat STRC

Ticket Booking, Pay Roll.

8

Madhya Pradesh SRTC

Pay Roll, Personnel Information System, Tyre performance, Inventory Management, Ticket Bookings, Financial accounting

9

Maharashtra STRC

Stores and workshop (job costing), Ticket Bookings, Pay Roll, Tyre Performance, Financial and materials accounting, Ticketing System.

10

Chennai MTCL

Pay Roll, Inventory Management, Bus Pass, Financial Accounting, MIS

11

North West Karnatka RTC

Pay Roll, MIS, Ticket Booking, Bus Pass, MIS

12

Rajasthan STRC

Tyre performance, Financial, material & P/L accounting, Inventory Management, Ticket Bookings, MIS

13

South BSTC

Pay Roll, Inventory Management, Ticket Bookings

14

SETC

Tamil Nadu

Pay Roll, Financial, materials and P/L accounting, Tyre performance, Ticket Bookings, Personnel Information system, Traffic management.

15

Solapur MTU

Office automation.

16

Madurai TSTC

Pay Roll, Inventory, Financial, material and P/L accounting, Cash Book & ledgers, Tyre and Battery performance, MIS, Maintenance management, Fuel and Oil management, Permit management, Personnel Management, Bus Pass.

17

Villupuram TSTC

Pay Roll, Accounting & Budgeting, Costing, Inventory, Traffic Management, Tyre performance Legal Information system, MIS

18

Kumbakonam

TSTC

Pay Roll, Inventory, Tyre and fuel management., Personnel, Financial accounting & MIS

19

Thane MTU

Ticket System & MIS

 

It can therefore be summed up that application of Information Technology in most of the STUs is not uniform throughout the country and not at all in integrated manner. Implementation of IT in integrated manner therefore could help STUs in reducing their losses by way of reducing the strength of back office workers, halving the number of conductors, reducing the number of workers in purchase, store and accounts functions. Also, making more buses available at one time on road; making increase of fare possible in delta increments, and providing better customer satisfaction and introducing transparency in their operations including administration and personnel. It is estimated that IT projects could pay back their cost within 6 months and thereafter it is all win-win situation for STUs.

 

by PKGUPTA

Author was till recently ADVISOR (IT&SP) at DTC

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