ExpertDabbler

Have we not heard some guru say, ‘Making life interesting is all in our control’?

This Tuesday morning, I got down at Tambaram from yet another trip down south and moved towards the East Tambaram terminus. The first thing I noticed was a bus to Velachery and the next thing to strike me was ‘paradox of choice’. At any given point in time, there are about 15 buses towards Velachery lined up in 1 km distance. I was not sure which one to get into. Common sense predicts that people catch the bus that leaves first. And one would’ve thought the bus which is more populated will leave first as well. Come try that You might’ve secured a seat in bus 1, only to find the bus stationed 4 buses behind you starting first Apparently this has worked so well and got so many positive feedback from commuters (doing things different, making life interesting and unpredictable blah blah) that our transport corporations has adopted this strategy all over Tamil Nadu and extended this to pricing the ticket fares as well.

The previous day, I travelled in mofussil bus from Virudhunagar to Thirumangalam, a distance of 25 kms. The fare was Rs.8 per ticket. The distance from ThirupurankundramThirumangalam to Madurai Periyar bus stand should be around 20 kms and you MUST take a town bus. Factors like town bus and lesser distance tempted me to think the fare would be lower. Ah, things were not so simple.

First I had some fun with the ‘Which bus starts first’ game as described above. After three attempts, I decided ‘let me get down and stand near the exit, that way I can catch the first bus which leaves the terminus first’. Hurrah, my strategy worked perfect!!
And it would be even more interesting to adopt this strategy with a 50+ year old lady and 4 bags

Coming to the fare, It was blind date again. I paid Rs. 11 on an orange color bus. My uncle tells me the yellow color (CITY EXPRESS?) bus costs less but not sure by how much. The LSS service comes even cheaper. And the ordinary service is the cheapest. Only catch - the ordinary bus is rarer to find than a white elephant.

In Chennai. the variants as far as I know here goes like - blue, yellow, orange, express service, A/C service, and last and definitely the least - ordinary buses. Needless to say, the fare varies as much as the colors as well.

I can understand that our transport corporations are attempting what HUL’s strategy to sell soaps from prices of Rs.5 to Rs.50. The only difference is, the price of the soap marketed by HUL is available upfront while the price and timing of the bus, we will come to know when it happens.

What’s next?

Plan A- I guess someone who is a regular in our city buses should start a web 2.0 site and let the readers post the fares for all the permutations and combinations. We can conveniently take a print out and have it handy before boarding the next city bus in Tamil Nadu. Kudos to the transport corporation for making our miserable lives as interesting as a video game, without the video

Plan B:
Catch a share auto

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 10:05 pm and is filed under Tamil Nadu, Daily Life, chennai. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.