Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation - Types of Services

Types of Services

1. Ordinary:

• Blue and White: The old buses with ordinary fares. Buses introduced after 2001 have pneumatic doors. Parisara Vahini ordinary buses also sport the same color and were introduced between 2002 and 2008 with pneumatic doors. Parisara Vahini buses introduced from 2007 onwards have head rest seats.

• Light blue buses: The new ordinary bus under the JnNURM scheme with low floors and LED boards. They also have an LED board inside the bus which displays the next stop the bus is approaching.

• Marcopolo Non-AC: These buses are also introduced under the JnNURM scheme. They also have low floors. They have LED boards both for displaying route number/route and the approaching stop.

• Red buses: Introduced w.e.f December 2011, the buses belong to new batch of ordinaries that have arrived in the city with BS IV emission norms-majority of them are red in colour and a few of them in the light blue colour

2. Suvarna: Silver coloured with red lining. Earlier they had Re.1 higher fare than ordinary. Since the revision of fares in June 2010, Suvarna and Ordinary bus tickets cost the same. Many Suvarna buses are now being re-painted into the white and blue color or converted into Big cirlce/Small Circle buses/Metro Feeder services

3. BIG 10: BIG10 services deploy (Suvarna class of) buses branded in green and bottle green on 12 major corridors coming in from surrounding sub-urbs in the city - Hosur road, Bannerghatta road, Sarjpura road, Kanakapura road, Mysore road etc. These buses are run on a direction based concept where the commuter takes the next (high frequency, every 15 minutes) bus in his/her direction of travel, and if need be, makes a change over to another bus to reach the destination. The service terminates on different points on the radius of the city core, to avoid congesting the city centre. These buses are numbered with a G prefix.

4. BIG Circle: These buses are white colored with BIG Circle written on the sides and it also has arrows painted in green, red, orange and black. These buses ply on ring roads connecting various parts of the city. Some of these buses are numbered with a C prefix and others are numbered with a K prefix(small circle on Inner Ring road).

5. Pushpak: Launched in the late 90's. Single door bus with/without conductors. Driver acts as conductor when there is no conductor (Janapriya Vahini). These are coffee coloured buses with fares similar to Suvarna. Generally provided on contract to IT companies and schools.

6. Vajra: Hi-tech buses from Volvo running on routes serving the IT companies' locations and various residential routes as well. Higher fares about 1.5 to 3 times that of ordinary depending on the route. LED boards.

7. Vayu Vajra: Volvo buses to airport operated from 12 routes. Free Wi-Fi access is provided to the commuters in these buses.

8. Atal Sarige: Low-cost buses with single seats along the windows and LED display. Have a tri-colour outside. On 1 June 2009, to celebrate their first anniversary, the Government of Karnataka and the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation sold off a pro-poor bus service called the Atal Sarige. The service aims at providing low-cost connectivity for the economically backward sections of the society to the nearest major bus station.

9. Marcopolo AC: Buses from Tata-Marcopolo collaboration introduced under the JnNURM scheme. Their fare is costilier by 1.5times the fare of ordinary buses. Usually ply on routes where volvo is not popular.

10.Metro Feeder: Introduced w.e.f October 2011 after the launch of the 1st line of metro, these buses have painting similar to the colour of the Metro train and running on 10 routes as feeder to the Metro stations

BMTC has currently introduced Mercedes Benz buses on a trial basis. BMTC would be introducing buses powered by solar energy in Bangalore.