Poor trials force MSRTC to shelve GPS project

Pune, July 31: THE Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC)’s project to have Global Positioning System (GPS) installed in its buses has been shelved for now.

In its bid to go hi-tech, the MSRTC had in 2004 initiated trials on five long routes including Nagpur-Pune, Nagpur-Chandrapur, Nagpur-Gadchiroli, Nagpur-Pandharpur and Nagpur-Gondia on a package designed by Centre for Development of Advance Computing (C-DAC). A senior C-DAC officer, on condition of anonymity, however said they did not receive any communication from the MSRTC once the trials were concluded.

While admitting the system would have been useful, MSRTC spokesperson Neera Asthana said the administration had not received satisfactory results from the trials. “The (GPS) exercise would have helped us track buses and to find out if they were running on time, for instance,” Asthana said. “But due to bad connectivity of the GPS network and telephone services, we were unable to trace our vehicles.”

She said the corporation had specifically chosen long distance routes so that the system got the maximum load, adding they had had no problems with estimating the budget for the hi-tech service. “But currently, we don’t plan to install GPS. We will think about the project in the future,” she said.

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