Bangalore travails: Since I changed jobs recently, and my new office doesn't have enough parking space(which is typical of all these high-rise office buildings here), I decided to chance my luck with the "common-man" bangalorean, and travel by bus. I prefer buses over autos(ubiquitous 3-wheeler transports for Indian cities) for these reasons:

1. a bus is more comfortable over the potholes, of which there are many
   
2. you feel a little less of the noise and air pollution, of which there is lots
3. there is lesser problem of coughing up the right "change"
4. I reduce congestion and pollution on the roads(he-he, but I'm being serious)
5. I like observing people, and there's more people in a bus to observe :)
   

But Bangalore buses are the worst among all cities that I've seen. You can pile on a list of complaints that will include:

• sign-boards : this problem comes in all varieties. Sometimes there are none, sometimes they're poorly illuminated, they're all written in Kannada and Kannada only, the number is written in yellow on a red background, which, believe me, is not very good for visibility. Thank God for the numbers, which are in english numerals, but a few years back, even numbers were written in Kannada. I think that *really* encouraged a lot of "outsiders" to learn the Kannada maathu. Some buses, just to relive old times, come without any numbering(!?!?!?), and signage in pure Kannada(I hope).
  
• bus-stops: most of the bus-stops do not have information on which buses stop there. What is more, most buses stop almost as an after-thought, bang-in-the-middle-of-the-road, forcing old women and children to navigate between other speeding vehicles(including the ubiquitous autos) in order to board. Sadistic?
• cost-cutting: What's really pathetic is that sometimes drivers issue tickets, and if you're wondering what's new since this system is in place in almost every developed country, here the poor driver has to collect the money, tear the ticket from a set of books, give back change, all mostly done while he is driving since he has to move from the bus-stop where he has parked bang-in-the-middle-of-the-road!!! In a country which is flush with the educated-unemployed, you would think that they would have at least one conductor per bus...

So in spite of all these things, I have still stuck to my bus travails, ahem, travels. And I feel Bangalore can learn a lot from Chennai, which is just 300 kms away, in order to eliminate most of these problems. Not that the Chennai Metropolitan Transport Corporation is perfect, but its certainly better.

Funnily enough, Bangalore's aping of the west is taken to newer heights: yesterday, I saw a bright sign at a particularly busy intersection which said: "Buckle up, its the law"!!! I remember seeing this only in the US before. What's funny is that most of the vehicles on the roads here are 2-wheelers(motorbikes, scooters etc.) and autos, none of which really have any safety mechanisms. And usually cars here can't travel at speeds of more than 25 kmph within the city, which means safety belts don't matter much. So what is that sign really doing there? Improve the bloody infrastructure guys, put more buses on the road rather than wasting money on bright signs that mean zilch to real public safety.