The Kochi Metropolitan Transport Authority (KMTA), the first of its kind in the country with legislative backing, is struggling to stay afloat, 13 months after its inauguration. The authority was expected to act as an umbrella agency to streamline parking, integrate commuting modes, and usher in route rationalisation of buses in the Greater Kochi area.
The situation is attributed mainly to the Finance Department not taking a call on appointing economists and experts in transport, urban planning and related fields in the body, despite repeated requests and follow-ups. Bereft of them, KMTA, which was vested with wide-ranging powers to plan, coordinate and supervise transport-related matters that affect a population of over a million people, is left with just a managing director and two technical experts, ever since its launch on November 1, 2020. This has also resulted in much of the office space that was taken on ₹80,000 monthly rent, remaining vacant.
“The body has not been able to do the spade work and implement decisions taken at two director board meetings chaired by the Minister for Transport. The decisions include formation of committees comprising personnel from departments like the Motor Vehicles Department (MVD) as well as the Kochi Corporation, bus route rationalisation, finalising a parking policy, implementing a full-fledged open mobility network, and permitting entry of buses from Goshree Islands, which now terminate trips at High Court Junction, into the city,” sources said.
The Finance Department is dilly-dallying in appointing 21 technical experts that the KMTA had sought, although their salary can be met from the transport fund that the body can generate. There is no compulsion that the government provide their salary. If this is the plight of the authority in Kochi, less said the better about the plight of a similar authority that was mooted for Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode, they added.
Fed up with the delay, the authority is learnt to have recommended to the Finance Department to employ technical experts on contract basis.
Its managing director Shanavas S. spoke of how NGOs with expertise in streamlining and integrating public transport are engaged in developing software to digitise the time schedule of buses that operate in the Greater-Kochi area. “They are doing it free of cost. Ferries too will be brought under its fold. On its part, the Regional Transport Authority [RTA] too ought to take a call on permitting entry of Goshree buses into city routes, based on route rationalisation,” he said.
The architect of the National Urban Development Policy, O.P. Agarwal, who is an expert member of KMTA, reiterated that the body played an important role in ushering in fast, reliable, sustainable and cost-effective modes of commute that are crucial for urban mobility.
