What's so L(e)SS about it anyway!!!
For someone familiar with Chennai, the word LSS would be easy to recognize. For the uninitiated, LSS is the name of a service provided by Metropolitan Transport Corporation [Chennai] Limited, shortly referred to as MTC or popularly as PTC.
PTC! That's the local govt bus service, which is quite ubiquitous. Some users remember it for its connectivity. A few others for its rarity. And some for their roofs that leak rainwater right through (do they even think of using an umbrella right inside, when this happens?!? or harvest it and provide fresh drinking water on the house?!? okay, lets cut the crap). Two wheeler riders remember for the smoke & noise it farts out! And two+ wheeler folks for the way these buses block traffic at bus stops!
That was a primer!
Talking about the services within PTC, it spans from the white board and yellow board to the luxury air coaches and the Air Conditioned Volvo fleet. The tarrif for these services too are in that order (increasing)! People diffentiate the services through the backgroud colour of the boards on top of the windshield. The route number and details are generally painted on these boards.
A few days back, what caught my eyes also caught my mind!
..... About a decade or more back, there was this yellow board bus service which PTC introduced. It used to be just white, I mean the boards across all buses, before the yellow boards came up. And PTC named it LSS, short for Less Stop Service, and charged 30-50% more on the ticket charges. Their USP was these buses stop in lesser number of bus-stops and so reach the main bus-stops and the destination faster!
And LSS was quite a hit then! And how!
That said, with current traffic pattern and volume, LSS or not, Beamer or a mofa, it doesnt matter. Traffic is a great leveller. We all move on at the same pace... a few inches per minute! As traffic got worse, the differentiator just faded out! So did the name LSS. But the color survived though.....
So, what caught my eyes was the same old name LSS on one of the buses, which I was trying to speed past on my way to work, a few days back.
And what caught my mind was this thought! The government charged people a few bucks extra, penalised people who wanted to be efficient!
I mean, you wanna reach a place in the shortest time, in the shortest route spending the least amount of resources, in that order! unless it's some sort of a pleasure drive down ECR!
The white board buses stop at almost every bus stop, at times just a few hundred meters apart. Well, I would think, if people are lazy to even walk down 500 meters to the bus-stops where the yellow buses stop, then they should also pay the price for that. Instead, the yellow board travellers fund the white board folk's laziness. What a socialist stuff, this!
It's not just the time that is wasted travelling in the white board buses, it's the fuel too, wasted in starting and stopping them so frequently. And add to all that, the huge pile up it generates everytime it stops!
Is'nt it all so contra? so much counter productive?
Infact it should've been the other way round! The white board travellers should pay more and provide an incentive for the yellow board travellers who wanna be productive with their time, by way of subsidising their tickets!
Any takers?!?
PTC! That's the local govt bus service, which is quite ubiquitous. Some users remember it for its connectivity. A few others for its rarity. And some for their roofs that leak rainwater right through (do they even think of using an umbrella right inside, when this happens?!? or harvest it and provide fresh drinking water on the house?!? okay, lets cut the crap). Two wheeler riders remember for the smoke & noise it farts out! And two+ wheeler folks for the way these buses block traffic at bus stops!
That was a primer!
Talking about the services within PTC, it spans from the white board and yellow board to the luxury air coaches and the Air Conditioned Volvo fleet. The tarrif for these services too are in that order (increasing)! People diffentiate the services through the backgroud colour of the boards on top of the windshield. The route number and details are generally painted on these boards.
A few days back, what caught my eyes also caught my mind!
..... About a decade or more back, there was this yellow board bus service which PTC introduced. It used to be just white, I mean the boards across all buses, before the yellow boards came up. And PTC named it LSS, short for Less Stop Service, and charged 30-50% more on the ticket charges. Their USP was these buses stop in lesser number of bus-stops and so reach the main bus-stops and the destination faster!
And LSS was quite a hit then! And how!
That said, with current traffic pattern and volume, LSS or not, Beamer or a mofa, it doesnt matter. Traffic is a great leveller. We all move on at the same pace... a few inches per minute! As traffic got worse, the differentiator just faded out! So did the name LSS. But the color survived though.....
So, what caught my eyes was the same old name LSS on one of the buses, which I was trying to speed past on my way to work, a few days back.
And what caught my mind was this thought! The government charged people a few bucks extra, penalised people who wanted to be efficient!
I mean, you wanna reach a place in the shortest time, in the shortest route spending the least amount of resources, in that order! unless it's some sort of a pleasure drive down ECR!
The white board buses stop at almost every bus stop, at times just a few hundred meters apart. Well, I would think, if people are lazy to even walk down 500 meters to the bus-stops where the yellow buses stop, then they should also pay the price for that. Instead, the yellow board travellers fund the white board folk's laziness. What a socialist stuff, this!
It's not just the time that is wasted travelling in the white board buses, it's the fuel too, wasted in starting and stopping them so frequently. And add to all that, the huge pile up it generates everytime it stops!
Is'nt it all so contra? so much counter productive?
Infact it should've been the other way round! The white board travellers should pay more and provide an incentive for the yellow board travellers who wanna be productive with their time, by way of subsidising their tickets!
Any takers?!?
posted by scottpecksez at 2:27 PM
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