My Experience of Paying with UPI on a KSRTC Bus
Here’s my experience of paying with UPI for a ticket on a KSRTC bus via Google Pay in Kerala, underscoring my observation that it might not be the best method for transit payments.
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India needs to figure out Travel/Transit cards
India needs to mandate travel/transit cards for all types of public transport across the country to make travel easier and frictionless.
Kerala KSRTC Starts Regular Electric Bus Services
Kerala KSRTC operates electric buses on regular timetables on urban and inter-city routes. Ten buses run daily services between Trivandrum and Ernakulam.
#SaveKSRTC: The Pension System is Killing it
Kerala’s great KSRTC saga continues unabated. For the past three decades, the beloved people’s transportation corporation has been lurching from crisis to crisis, mostly of the financial nature, facing problems in everything from over staffing to buying diesel and spare parts to paying pensions and salaries. The present problem relates to pensions. There are thousands…
Missing a Train and the Philosophy of Reason
Human beings are hardwired to always look for patterns and reasons in everything, which is why we keep on wondering about why things happen, especially when they do not go as per plan. However, no matter what Paulo Coelho thinks, my general belief is that the Universe is too busy to give a flying f**k…
How to Modernize and Save (Kerala) KSRTC 2
Kerala’s once-prosperous and mighty “Red Elephant” (aanavandi) is all but skin and bones today, but nursing it back to health is not Mangalyaan-science as explained in the previous chapter. However, there is a much deeper reason behind KSRTC’s present crisis than simple financial travails. Without fixing that, any kind of solution implemented will only be temporary. In the last…
How to Save and Revive (Kerala) KSRTC Part 1
The Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) has a long and illustrious history that precedes even the state of Kerala or India. It starts in 1937 when the Travancore State Transport Department was constituted by HH Sree Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma, the Maharaja of Travancore. The first buses were imported from England. Post independence the TSTD was incorporated as an…
20 Things India Will Have as a Developed Country
Make no mistake, the aspirations of ours to become a Superpower or even a developed nation by 2020 is quite a lofty one, considering the present scenario of us as a people, more than that of as a nation. That is because there are many things that constitute a how a developed nation should be,…
The Matrix Tatkal Anomaly and Missed Trains
The Universe works in uncanny ways and it has its own ways of setting things right to preserve the delicate equilibrium that governs us all. I got a taste of this the other day in Final Destination proportions of a Shakespearean tragedy, when a much-lauded ‘out-of-the-blue’ rare achievement of mine was ruthlessly cancelled out, the…
The Red Killers of Kochi
The private buses of Ernakulam-Kochi, the mainstay of the city’s public transport options, have progressed from being a menace on the city’s roads to an outright danger to life. The were called the “Red Devils” before, but now with the body count stacking up, they are called the “Red Killers of Kochi“. And two days…
The Adventures of KLBLRTraveler
Any Indian worth his travel bag will swear that traveling in India is a huge fail whale. Airports are located in areas where just getting there is a half day’s job. Trains are overbooked, chaotic, slow and of course, late. Buses run when they want to, and usually seem to all places except where you want to go to. Want to…