BMTC Bus Route Search Now More Powerful!

One of the main limitations of my bus route search website was the lack of information on indirect routes between any two locations. For example, if you wanted to go to ITPL from say Basavanagudi, you would not find any direct bus route available. So what would you do? Catch an auto? No way, what with the recent skyward hike in auto fares. A better solution would be to change one or two buses to reach your destination. Thus you could catch one bus to Richmond Circle, and then a connecting bus to ITPL. There could be other alternatives for the changeover point. Which among them is the best alternative?

Several people had requested for this feature as well. The result is now before you. Do browse to http://www.narasimhadatta.info/bmtc_query.html and check out for yourself.

There are several search methods you could use. These are:

1. Direct Routes Only
2. Minimum Number of Hops
3. Maximum Bus Route Availability
4. Via Terminal Bus Stations Only
5. Shortest Distance

The Direct Routes Only option is exactly the same as the earlier simple search - it only shows the direct bus routes between any two locations. In case no direct route exists, you could try the other methods. There could be several criteria for selecting a multi-hop route plan. For instance, you might want to minimize the number of buses to change. Or you might want to travel only along those paths that have the highest bus frequency. If you travel by bus occasionally, you might want to change over to another bus only at terminal bus stations. Now you can get the information about any of these preferences.

In the Minimum Number of Hops method, upto five route plans are presented. These route plans have been arranged so as to minimize the total distance travelled. The Maximum Bus Route Availability method also computes upto five route plans. Here the travel time has been taken into consideration as a secondary parameter.

The Via Terminal Bus Stations Only method shows the direct routes between two locations if they are available. Otherwise the changeover points are restricted to only terminal stations. Here terminal station refers to any location where a bus route starts or terminates. Thus some locations such as Corporation which are normally not thought of as terminal stations would also figure in the search results.

The final search method is Shortest Distance. As the note on the website indicates, the route plan determined by this method may not be directly useful since it tends to generate too many hops. It is included for the sake of completeness only. This is based on approximate distances and is by no means accurate. This method could be used for other purposes also, for example to get direct paths while driving from one location to another.

Last but not least, the website has got a UI makeover what with my exercises with HTML and CSS. All the pages on the website validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict as mandated by the W3C consortium. There are some incompatibilities in the display between IE and Firefox, but that hopefully should get ironed out soon. Now you can also leave a comment which shows up directly on the website itself. Use that facility and let me know your comments and suggestions!