What Hinjewadi IT Park employees are doing to solve traffic problem?

Hinjewadi IT Park in Pune is now known for notorious traffic jams on weekdays. Hundreds of thousands of employees (including me) work there. Many vent their frustrations via social media.

The traffic at Hinjewadi is seriously frustrating & hampers productivity at work significantly. Come together. Tweet with #HinjewadiMess.
— Rahul Wane (@rahulwane) February 26, 2015

Road to hinjewadi - IT Capital of Maharashtra.. Place for major IT companies but full of traffic & potholes @Dev_Fadnavis pls do something
— iNikhil (@nikhilsarode123) March 3, 2015

So what are we doing to solve the traffic problem. Is there anything more than can be done?
First of I would like to quickly mention what is being already done to solve the issues.

Public Transport

You will surprised to know many employees regularly use PMPML buses even though they own cars.

Company Provides Buses

Thousands of employees (probably up to 40 %) use company provides buses instead of cars. We should also appreciate company administration managing bus services (in spite of many challenges).

Car Pooling

Many employees have taken efforts to car pool to save cost and indirectly reduce no. of cars on the roads.
One employee even quite his job to create car pooling app: http://www.mebuddie.com/home/carpool
We also hope that Olacabs will come up with some new ideas to encourage car pooling.

Hinjewadi Industries Association

The association has got a very clear mandate from companies to work on issues faced by employees (traffic, safety etc.). Although they are bit slow (lack of resources) they have take efforts towards solving many problems. They also act as official interface with political leaders and representatives,

See their initiative MetroZip.

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/HIA.Pune

You need to contact you company Admin head for any suggestions/ideas for HIA to work on.

Improving Public Transport

There are so many activists and organisation working to improve PMPML and in general state of public transport in Pune. Following is partial list:

• Save Pune Traffic Movement : very active on practical initiatives and working with Pune traffic police
• MCCIA Janwani 
• Parisar (you can participate on very active and informative online forum PTTF
• PMPML Pravasi

What Next?

Political Action

Small changes are possible if we common people co-operate, help, suggest government administration. But big changes are possible only if we actively participate in politics and influence decisions and policies and more importantly how tax payer money is used.

One example of Political action is signature and awareness campaign arranged by Hinjewadi IT park employee Ashish Mishra.

@devendradesh join us today to get solution on #HinjewadiTraffic @adityakaole @sdpolke pic.twitter.com/LXh1f6bQPY
— AshishMishra (@aashish81us) February 28, 2015

A meet was arranged at Shivar Chowk, Pimple Saudagar. Lots of people working in Hinjewadi IT park stay in this area. We had a very good discussion and exchange of ideas and took few signatures of people supporting the campaign.

Flyover Design

Few months back newly built flyover on Solapur road, at Mega center and Sahyadri Hospital corner (see location in map below) was opened for public.


View Larger Map

Simple observation of the flyover design would create lots of doubts and questions in anyone's mind.

Most shocking observation is that vehicles cross paths on the top of flyover. Very strange and unsettling, because common sense tells that flyover should make it possible for vehicles to travel without having to stop (for signal or pedestrians crossings etc.) anywhere. In other words, flyover should help move the vehicle fast (this does not always reduce traffic congestion, but that is another topic for discussion).

Is this flyover design correct?

Note: Above picture stitched image created using 2 different photos taken from top of nearby building. An object was blocking the middle portion of flyover, so I had to remove it and re-create flyover using photo editing.

You can easily see in above picture that vehicles have to be very careful or else collision can easily occur on the flyover (area marked in red circle). Also vehicles must slow down and stop on the flyover to allow other vehicles to pass. As of now, there is NO traffic signal on the flyover. Are they (Pune Municipal Corporation) going to install one? I don't know. If they do that would some kind of world record "A flyover with traffic signal".

Some unanswered questions:
Q. If this flyover design safe? Is crossing on flyover a good idea? 
Q. If NOT, they who approved this design?
Q. Is it worth Crores of rupees (people's money) spent on building it? what benefits does it provide?
Q. If it is flawed design, wow can we avoid this in future.
Q. Would it be some kind of world record if traffic signal is installed on a flyover?

Any ideas?

Note: If you are civil engineering teacher/student, please feel free to use this post and photo for classroom discussion.

Update (26 Dec 2014): Here is news article about Pedestrian First's proposal to modify the flyover.

Marathi Poems

काही दिवसांपूर्वी संदीप खरे आणि सलील कुलकर्णी यांचा "आयुष्यावर बोलू काही" चा जुना कार्यक्रम टीवीवर बघितला. खूप छान कविता आणि गाणी आहेत. संदीप खरेच्या कविता कुणाला आवडत नाहीत. त्याच्या कवितांचे पुस्तक आहे माझ्याकडे.

म्हंटल आपणही करावा प्रयत्न कविता करण्याचा, मनातील भावना व्यक्त करण्याचा. काहीशी अपूर्ण अशी आणि थोडीशी बोल्ड अशी कविता साधार करतो :

 "कोणीतरी"  

कोणीतरी माझ्या डोळ्यात बघून हसावे, लाजावे
कोणीतरी माझ्या केसांतून हात फिरवावा, कुरवाळावे
कोणीतरी ठेवावा माझ्या हातांवर हात, ओठांवर ओठ
कोणीतरी म्हणावे "तू माझा मी फक्त तुझीच"
कोणीतरी, जिच्यासाठी मी जगावे, मरावे !

Private Companies For Public Transportation

News article :
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/transportation/shipping-/-transport/Urban-transport-goes-corporate-Spice-Jet-MD-to-run-bus-fleet-in-Delhi/articleshow/5793965.cms
He said that the company will strive to provide Delhiites clean buses
which arrive on time, better trained drivers and facilities like
automated fare collection systems and GPS tracking.

Announcing the project, Verma added: ‘‘ The funds available with the
government are limited and Public Private Partnership (PPP) is the way
forward. By bringing in private players, we will be able to augment
the city’s public transport.’’

The start of the corporatization scheme comes as a breather for the
city that has around 5,000 buses against the requirement of 11,000.
Sources said the cluster will have a total 573 buses running on 32
routes. Of these, half the fleet will comprise of DTC buses. For its
services, Star Bus will be paid a around Rs 85.77 crore for first year
(Rs 47.4 per bus per km). The revenue from ticket sales on the bus
will go into the government’s kitty.

The operator will bring in all low-floor CNG buses. Of all buses , 20%
could be airconditioned. The entire operation will be monitored by the
transport department to ensure that stringent quality standards are
maintained. The department plans to float tenders for the next 16
clusters from next month and is in the process of making the terms for
the tender more stringent so that it attracts more serious bidders.
Following are my thoughts about this MoU between Star Bus Pvt Limited  and Delhi Govt. 
Routes
I assume government traffic department will decide routes and frequency. Private operator will be paid fixed revenue per KM that covers his cost and profit margin. This guarantees profit for private operator (which is okay, public transportation is not anti-business).
Bus Ownership
I assume , that private operator will buy and own (100 %) new buses (all CNG, 20 % AC). 573 buses per clusters. Initially 16 clusters. Later 16 more clusters. I hope and it seems that there is not partial ownership of buses. Existing fleet is and will be owned by govt. and will be phased out. New buses are 100% owned and maintained by private player, to be inducted gradually over a period of time (as existing old fleet is moved out.
Maintenance
Maintenance is prone to corruption, stealing and other in-efficiencies. Private player will be responsible for maintenance of buses and will be efficient for the same reason why people keep their houses clean but not the public place.
Employees
Also private player will hire/fire/train employees. Private player is likely to take better care of employees
IT and Software Infrastructure
Govt. is typically not very good in Identifying correct IT applications and buying them. Private player will decide on relevant IT needs and can buy them without cumbersome tendering processes.
Performance Monitoring
Private player and its performance will be monitored by the traffic department. Some kind of service level agreement. Risk of contract abortion will disincentives private player from cutting corners.
Revenue For Traffic Department
Traffic department will get all revenue earned by tickets. Nothing is mentioned about advertising revenues. So all that traffic department has to do is ensure that they come up with schedule, route, trip frequency such that revenue is more than Rs. 47.4 per KM. They pay Rs. 47.4 to private operator and rest is profit. If profit is negative it  would be a subsidy for public transport.
Depot land
There is not mention of depots. I assume relevant govt. agency will rent depot land to private player.

This is a win-win situation. Public representatives and government has full control over routes/schedule and how much they want to invest in bus transportation. They anyway decide FSIs of different areas, so they can decide routes. Every thing that requires engineering, IT expertise, honest employees and fast decisions is done by private player. In fact this will even improve working conditions for employees, so I hope they do not oppose this. Things like health
benefits take too much time in govt., private player can just use industry standard procedures.

Now for places like Pune, where central government has already given money to buy new buses, it is bit too late. Schemes with Partial ownership of buses were proposed but seems to be complex. Perhaps it would have been better if central government had given subsidy, subject to involving private player (who will own and buy buses) and generating certain revenue (that indicate no. of people served). The subsidy could be used to give attractive fixed revenue per KM to
private player. But in future Delhi model could be copied. PMPML could continue to operate some routes, side by side. They have to just make sure that routes operated by private player and PMPML are not overlapping.

Important details are missing in the article, so my assumptions could be wrong. Anyone (journalist, student etc.)  interested obtaining details should contact public relations officers at DTC and Delhi traffic department and obtain copy of MoU mentioned in the news article.

http://dtc.nic.in/dt2.htm#d1  
http://www.delhi.gov.in/wps/wcm/connect/doit_transport/Transport/Home/General+Information/Directory

Land Property Ownership

Came to know about a site created by Government of Maharashtra. It
allows you to check property ownership. Hope, this will be useful to
farmers Here is the link :
http://164.100.111.5:8080/mahabhulekh/

At IdeaCampPune2

At IdeaCampPune2 on 17th January 2009.

First of all:
In case you downloaded version 0.4 of project design document, please visit project page and download version 0.5 which contains lot more useful information.
http://code.google.com/p/ptransit/

At IdeaCamp, I gave a small talk about project pune transit (publishing schedule on PMPML website) . The talk was scheduled towards the end (evening), so very few people were present (around 20, patient but tired), also got less time (15 mins instead of 45 mins).

Luckily in the morning, Dr. Anupam Saraph gave talk on "Shared information system" which includes projects like:
- http://government.wikia.com/wiki/Pune
- http://ciopune.in/
- Budget tracking
- Single platform for NGOs
- Virtual cards etc.

I won't describe details of his talk, but overall it is about creating a common platform for citizens for sharing useful information, using latest technology(blogs, wikies, twitter, GPS, SMS, smart cards etc.) as enabler. Then combining various types of information together to creating something useful (1 + 1 = 11). Some audience asked questions about how government organizations can participate (specifically PMC employees may not skills to use wiki etc.) to which answer there was not satisfactory answer. Right now focus is involving citizens.

I managed to relate my talk with above theme and how it fills one gap i.e. lot of useful information produced by and available with government organizations. For example, bus schedule is generated and managed by PMPML. Then I went on describing progress so far in making accurate schedule available to passengers and technical problems. I introduced me as volunteer working with PMPML and PTTF.

There were some suggestions about getting funding from Google etc. but we did not get much time for Q & A, which was disappointing. This talk was mainly aimed at technical audience interested in schedule data and s/w programs to analyze/process the data to produce useful outputs.

In the morning I managed to get hold of Mr. Saraph and showed him sample output. He is willing to add links from his projects, to PMPML website once schedule is uploaded, in other words, provide more exposure to schedule information. I also met Unmesh who is working with Mr. Saraph who is providing maps related expertize.

Finally thanks to volunteers who made this IdeaCamp possible.

Voter Registration

I tried out voter registration on http://www.jaagore.com/. I had some problems printing the form from Linux. (using Firefox browser). Later I tried from MS Windows ((using Firefox browser)) and it worked. Best thing about Jaaro Re website is that it debunks many myths about voter registration process. Specifically if you are living away from your native place (i.e. permanent address, which for most young people, parents' residential address), you could still register and vote. In other words, even if you are living in rental apartment in some city in India, you can register and vote. Overall good work Jaago Re (meaning Wake Up in English) team!

People can also fill voter registration form (Form 6 etc.) by downloading from Election commission website http://www.eci.gov.in/forms/forms_Voters.asp

I have filled the forms, now I need to find out where to submit. Jaago Re website has some information about that too.

Skill Gap

TV Mohandas Pai's article "Bridging the skill gap through PPPs" in Economic Times is full of interesting statistics about education and human resources in India.

Universities	450
Colleges	18000
Rate of Higher Education (Age group = 18-24 Yrs)	11%
Total No. of People In Formal Sector	60 to 65 Million
No. of People Employed In Govt.	20 Million

Some of interesting points in the article:

"While we have lower number (i.e. percentage) of youngsters in colleges ... we are creating a large number of graduates whose skill levels and capabilities are totally out of sync with what the job market requires, creating a major human resource challenge"

"There is a tremendous shortage of carpenters, plumbers, electricians, mason, fitters, welders, drivers and other skilled people who form the backbone of any economy"

Later part of article mentions that Government is unable to spend budget allocate to higher education, which is surprising given the fact that I have read stories about lower salaries (compared to private sector) for teachers are Govt. run colleges.

Author then suggests spending budgeted money on scholarships for students. He did not mention anything about quality of education at primary and secondary schools. NGO Pratham has some recent statistics about students in schools for all states in India.

Last part of the article does not really elaborate on what he meant by Public-Private partnerships (PPPs). Most likely he wanted to suggest giving more autonomy to private institutes. Few months back there were news about problems with AICTE .

Some useful/relevant definitions:

Skilled Labour : Workers who have special knowledge or qualifications

Unskilled Labor: Also called common labor, -- is that which performs simple manual operations that are readily learned in a short time and that require exercise of little or no independent judgment.

Importance of good data in decision making

Following are quotes from Editorial in Economic Times :

Does the official wholesale price index (WPI) give a true picture of the extent of price rise (see ET, April 14)? Does the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) correctly capture the health of Indian industry? Is the data on agriculture or the services sector accurate? Answers to these and similar questions are important, not only because data integrity is a fundamental tenet of data collation but, more important, because policy responses would vary hugely depending on the answers.

... successive governments have failed to pay sufficient importance to upgrading the quality of our data. As a result, corrective action is often initiated when it is too late. Following the recommendations of the National Statistics Commission under the chairmanship of Dr C Rangarajan, the government has initiated some steps to rectify this situation.

Take for instance, recent efforts to construct a Producer Price Index (PPI) that will give a more accurate picture of inflation. The expert group has been unable to make any headway as it finds it cannot compel producers to supply data. It’s the same with the IIP that presently uses an out-dated base of 1993-94. The Collection of Statistics Bill, 2007, could make data collection easier but the Bill is still pending in Parliament. So for the moment we are really batting blind. Not a happy thought, but there it is!

There are many other instances where Indian government could improve quality of data (for example: air transportation, fatal road accidents etc.) Now a days there is no excuse for not having good data. Computers are cheap, hard disk is cheaper. Companies like Google a turn on with Tera bytes of data and over eager to host your data in the cloud.

I just googled for WPI and found on Ministry of Commerce & Industry website that there is some effort to revise WPI, hopefully to make it more accurate. Here is the link:

http://eaindustry.nic.in/wpiad.htm
Suggestions from Industry / Trade Associations, Price Statisticians, Experts and Index users for improvements of the new series of WPI

Mumbai: Challenges Ahead

Watched a good program "Mumbai 2005 floods" on National Geographic. They tried to explain what exactly happened on 26th July 2005.

- It rained heavily, around 900 mm in 24 hrs in Suburbs.
- Land reclamation and narrow Mithi river could not carry away water fast enough.
Almost everything (trains, airports, roads, electricity supply, emergency services) came to halt on that day in Mumbai.

I was searching for more information, found this excellent article about challenges in creating drainage, water treatment system for growing Mumbai.
http://www.canadianbusiness.com/managing/strategy/article.jsp?content=20060109_161339_2788

Some of interesting bits are :
year 1947, population 1.7 million approx.
year 1970, population 8.0 million approx.
year 2005, population 15 to 20 million estimated
year 2025, population 26.5 million estimated

"But despite some progress, the World Bank was ultimately disappointed with the outcome. A 1995 audit of its Bombay Sewage Disposal Project found that the plan's implementation was "little short of disaster." Huge cost overruns, insufficient expertise and shoddy workmanship all contributed."


"Many Indian engineers are well-educated and highly skilled, he adds--and in any case, locals tend to have a better grasp of their own problems than foreigners.
What Indian firms often lack, however, are management and supervision skills for big projects, which may also require highly specialized expertise found only in foreign firms."


"Many Mumbai residents don't pay for water and sewerage services; Indians tend to regard them as free. That has discouraged investment in system improvements, which, in turn, has contributed to well-founded complaints about poor service and bolstered resistance to user fees."


"RVA's Indian experience has left Perks with an abiding respect for Indian engineers and administrators who run the existing system. "They do a pretty good job for the infrastructure they have and the pressures they're under," ....

Microfinance: Giving opportunities to small vendors.

Few weeks back, I watched a TV program about Microfinance and Muhammad Yunus who pioneered Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.


An an young economist, one question that bothered Yunus is "Why so many people in his country are poor?".

He met a woman who made bamboo stools in a village. He found that, she borrowed money from "evil lender" for buying raw material. "Evil Lender" gave her money on a strict evil condition that all finished bamboo stools should be sold to only him at price lower than the market price of stools. So woman could earn very small amount of money at end of month, barely enough to buy food, no savings to buy raw material on her own. So next month she has NO other option than to borrow money from "evil lender". Government and private banks won't lend money to her without any collateral (which she did NOT have). She was stuck in hell.

So the microfinance idea is to provide poor woman enough money, trust in her skills, her ability to create small profitable business, her instincts to efficiently manage the money and take care of her children and family, make her independent.

Overall it was a inspiring TV programme. I need to find some more details about microfinance.
There is one idea in my mind, from my observation of street vendors (selling fruits, flowers, vegetables etc.) in big cities in India. Rightnow problem is they do not have a place/shop where they can store their products and sell to customers.

• A place where they can scale (meaning increase the size).
  
• A place which will protect them and their inventory from rain and sun.
• A place where customers will come to buy.

Maybe a 200 sq. feet. shop in a mall/vegetable marker. How do they get money to buy the shop? Can micro-finance ideas help? Are banks ready to lend them small load? or what if banks lend money to somebody who buys the shop(s) and rents them to poor vendors.
Does anybody knows about such banks?

Say No To Corruption

PM’s keynote address to conference of CBI & State Anti-Corruption Bureaus

"Our Government is also intending to bring forward a Public Services Bill before Parliament. The Bill will define a public services code of ethics and management. It will also protect whistleblowers and have the overall objective of developing public services as a professional, politically neutral, merit based, and accountable instrument for promoting good governance and better delivery of services to all our citizens.

When I recently watched the popular hindi movie, Lage Raho Munnabhai, the one incident that touched me most was the ordeal of a senior citizen trying to get his pension without having to pay a bribe. In stripping his clothes, as an act of protest, this pensioner was stripping our system, exposing the ugly nakedness of the self-aggrandisement of those who man our institutions of governance. Any system in which a retired senior citizen is required to pay a bribe to secure his legitimate dues is a most despicable system. Such corruption must be visited by the sternest action to reform, restructure and rejuvenate the system. The very legitimacy of the State and its various institutions is brought into question by such illegal exercise of power and authority."

For full text :
PM’s keynote address to conference of CBI & State Anti-Corruption Bureaus

For Right To Information Act related information:
http://persmin.nic.in/RTI/WelcomeRTI.htm

Story of Indian Children In Villages

For last few weeks, I have been watching TV program Being Indian on BBC World . It covers lives of underpriviledged kids in city slums and remote villages. It focuses mainly on child education, and how children from poor families have to work instead of going to schools. Although things are improving, lot needs to be done. Following are some thoughts in my mind.

In one episode of the program they show how teacher in villages in Orissa is NOT doing his job. He just leaves student in the class to study themselves. On second day he is absent. I heard similar stories from 12 year old's in Kolkata about how his teacher beat him and them he stopped going to school. Lack of good teachers in Indian villages is known problem for long time. Some innovative ideas are needed to improve quality of teachers in villages. Incentives ("Best village teacher in the district award" ?) needs to be designed to motivate them.

One more disappointing thing I noticed is lack of resposibility on the part of parents. The excuse they provide is "we are poor, we cannot afford to send our children to school, he/she must work in fields" etc. Well, then why did they produce them, if they know that they cannot take proper care of their children?. Also primary education in India is almost free, is it not? Why do parents want to keep their children illiterate? Do they not know importance of education, and its co-relation with quality of life? May they need to informed, encouraged to be good parents.

30th July episode of "Being Indian" told story of a girl from a village in Karnataka. I know that Infosys Foundation is doing some good work in villages in Karnataka. There might be other NGOs working on these problems. I would be interested to know your ideas.

Copyrights, Plagiarism, Young Students

Recent contraversy about book "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life" by Kaavya Viswanathan, made me think that many young people (especially young students in India) may not have clear knowledge about Copyrights. No, I am not implying that Kaavya Viswanathan did not know about Copyrights. The book contraversy is not the topic of this post.

From my experiences, students do create and submit project lot of reports, articles, poems, cartoons during their college days. Manytimes, they obtain work created by others from internet, books etc. and use in their work, which is perfectly fine as long as one mentions the reference and not claim the work as his/her own.

My effort is to help them avoid plagiarism (claiming someone else's work as your own, intentionly or otherwise).

Q. What is Copyrights and Why should I care?

You must have seen copyright notices on books. Something like (C) All rights reserved.

Copyrights give you certain rights to decide how your work should be used by others. Its relevant if your work is original and has commercial value. This includes books, articles, poems, software source code etc. work which exists in some forms. This will prevent somebody using your work for commercial gains without consulting/paying you.

Q. What can be protected by Copyrights?

Your expressions is some form can be copyrights, not underlying ideas. For example you can Copyright your particular poem (written on paper/on computer)about a train telling her emotions, but not idea that machines can express their emotions.

See http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/index.html
for more information. I quote paragraph relevant to above question.

"Facts are not protected even if the author spends considerable time and effort discovering things that were previously unknown. For example, the author of the book on Neanderthals takes ten years to gather all the necessary materials and information for her work. At great expense, she travels to hundreds of museums and excavations around the world. But after the book is published, any reader is free to use the results of this ten year research project to write his or her own book on Neanderthals -- without paying the original author."

Important point is it also means that you cannot publish somebody else's work, claiming it to be your's. It not legal in India and may other countries. However fair use of the other's work is allowed.

I hope this makes you aware of basics of Copyrights. Do your own research for more information on fair use, patents, and related topics.

Some more useful links.
Myths about copyright explained http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html

Pune Municipal Transport

A friend's mail ignited my passions about public transport systems and productivity of people. :-)

So follwing is letter, I wrote to PMT on July 2004. If I remember correctly, PMT people said me that they will be putting data (schedule etc.) on a new website. I just googled for it, could not find. Do you know it, oh, you smart reader of my blog? then do not hesitate to mail me : vijay.patil -ta- gmail.com

More reference links :
www.transitchicago.com/
www.pacebus.com/


To
General Manager
Pune Municipal Transport,
Pune, India
Subject: Request for data about bus routes, bus stops etc. for academic or
experimental software project(s)

Dear Sir,
I am an independent software programmer interested in academic or experimental software projects related to public transport.

One such software project is designed to help people to access information about bus routes between different bus stops using Internet. This project is referred as Pune Navigator in this document.

Similar project called Mumbai Navigator has been successfully done by Prof. Abhiram G. Ranade and his students at Computer Science and Engineering Department of Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. BEST who operates bus service in Mumbai provided the required data. Mumbai Navigator is very popular among the users. Pune Navigator will involve small changes in the existing software. Prof. Ranade has kindly agreed to make those changes once the data about bus routes, bus stops is made available. I am making a formal request to you for the data on his behalf.

Following will be the main benefits of Pune Navigator.

+ Benefits For People (Users of PMT Bus service)

1. User will see different routes of PMT bus services between any two bus stops.
2. User will see estimated fare in Rs. between two bus stops and frequency of buses.
3. People will come to know about changes in the bus routes (new bus routes,
cancelled bus routes) immediately.
4. Use of computers, Internet is rapidly increasing among people due to factors like
low costs, useful software & services, educational value etc. Pune Navigator will
be easily accessible using any computer (at home, office, school, hospitals etc.)
having Internet connection. This will help people to plan properly.

+ Typical user profiles
Students, senior citizens, IT professionals, business visitors, tourists etc.

+ Benefits For PMT
1. Pune Navigator will indirectly to add more users to PMT bus service. This will positively affect PMT revenues.

2. Use of software for better management. The data about bus routes, frequency and bus stops will be entered and stored in a database. This will help to add, access, and modify data easily. PMT Managers will be able obtain specific information quickly which will help them to make quick decisions.

3. Good starting point for more elaborate software projects (which PMT might undertake in future) for increasing revenues, increasing quality of service, and better management.

To start the work on the project, I kindly request you to make available following data about PMT bus service.

1. List of all bus routes
2. Round trip time for each route
3. Frequency of each route
4. List of all main bus stops (name of the bus stop and stop code number)
5. Distance in KMs between different bus stops
6. Other related data of potential usefulness

You can contact me or Professor Ranade for more information.

Note: Mumbai Navigator can be accessed using Internet at following URL:
http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/navigator/index.html