Digitizing UPSRTC and the

transport system of IIM Lucknow

MIS project submission by

Group 3
Members
Ravi Verma (PGP26302)
Swetha S (PGP26315)
Vineet Jain (PGP26316)
Vineet Kumar (PGP26317)
Vineet Singh (PGP26318)
 Foreword

The goal of the project has mainly been to study the organization and IT/IS usage of UPSRTC. Since
the headquarters of UPSRTC is located in Lucknow, we did go and meet the staff and the Systems and
software Engineer at the corporate office of UPSRTC to gain insights on the business model and
process adopted by the organization. Efforts were taken to understand and analyse IT/IS usage of the
current system and find out if there were any pressing issues that the company was facing.
Combining the magnitude of the problems along with feasibility due to budget and time constraints,
we have proposed a solution which we believe is economical and at the same time helpful to the
organization. The contact details of the staff contacted is as given below:

Mr. Shailendra Kumar Tiwary,

Software and systems Engineer,
UPSRTC, Lucknow
Ph no.: +91 9415115361
Email: skt64_tanay@yahoo.co.in | skt64.tanay@gmail.com

In addition to the study on UPSRTC, a minor study on the transport system existing at IIM Lucknow
was also performed. The Transport Section in college and the Infrastructure Secretary of IIM
Lucknow were contacted to obtain an overview of the existing IS model and make a few suggestions
that may help in efficient functioning of the system.

Mr. Sushil
Transport Section,
IIM Lucknow

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 Table of Contents

1. Mission..................................................................................................................................................... 3

2. Facts.......................................................................................................................................................... 3

3. Data Analysis......................................................................................................................................... 4

4. About the Organization..................................................................................................................... 4

4.1 Corporate office............................................................................................................................ 5
4.2 Depot................................................................................................................................................. 6
4.3 Relations.......................................................................................................................................... 6
4.3.1 Customers............................................................................................................................... 6
4.3.2 Employees.............................................................................................................................. 6
4.3.3 Contractors............................................................................................................................. 7

5. Proposed Solutions............................................................................................................................. 7
5.1 Networking within UPSRTC Depots..................................................................................... 7
5.1.1 Shortfalls of the present approach............................................................................... 7
5.2 Revenue Reconciliation Reporting Tool.............................................................................8
5.3 Other Proposed Improvements........................................................................................... 10
5.4 Digitization of the IIML Transport system......................................................................10
5.4.1 Business model.................................................................................................................. 10

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 Uttar Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (UPSRTC)

1. Mission
To make travelling by buses an experience from merely a necessity to a safe & comfortable journey
on a wide road network across U.P. & its neighbouring states.

2. Facts
 Fleet size of around 7668 buses. It operates over 2.5 million kilometres catering to the travel
needs of over 1.3 million people and earning over Rs. 38.3 million every day.
 Passenger road transport services in the state of U.P. started on 15th May, 1947 with the
operation of bus service on the Lucknow - Barabanki route by the erstwhile U.P. Government
Roadways.
 Subsequently, during the fourth Five Year Plan, the erstwhile UP Government Roadways was
rechristened as Uttar Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (UPSRTC) on 1-6-72 under
the provisions of the Road Transport Act, 1950

The team went to the UPSRTC corporate headquarters located at Parivartan Chowk in Lucknow and
spoke to Mr. Shailendra Kumar Tiwary – a senior software and systems engineer at UPSRTC. The
following were the insights obtained after the discussion

3. Data Analysis
UPSRTC has seen negative Cash Profits since 2008. Although revenues have increased, the
corporation has been unable to contain costs sufficiently, or increase revenues proportional to the
same. One major reason behind this decline is the rise of usage of own-vehicles for travel between
cities, especially on shorter routes (<150 km). It can be seen in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: UPSRTC Performance. (Source: Mr. ST Tripathi, UPSRTC Corporate Headquarters,

Lucknow.)

When assessing profitability of depots, we chose the top 8 depots in terms of total income, and
analyzed their profitability (in profit or loss per bus per day). It is shown in Figure 2 below.

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Figure 2: Depot-Wise Profitability. (Source: Mr. ST Tripathi, UPSRTC Corporate Headquarters,
Lucknow.)

Depots in rapidly industrializing areas, like Ghaziabad and Meerut have shown strong profitability
per bus. Locations in eastern/central-eastern UP, like Lucknow, Gorakhpur and Kanpur, however,
have seen declines in this profitability.

4. About the Organization

The corporate office of the corporation is situated at Lucknow. For efficient functioning, the
corporation has been divided into 19 regions of which 2 regions operate urban & sub-urban services.
Each region has a regional workshop where major repair and maintenance work as well as assembly
reconditioning work is performed. Each region has been further divided into operational units called
depots. The total number of depots in the corporation is 108, including car-section. Each depot has a
depot workshop attached to it to provide supportive maintenance facilities. For heavy maintenance
and repair of vehicles, reconditioning of major assemblies, renovation of buses and construction of
bodies on new chassis, two Central workshops have been established in Kanpur: Central Workshop,
Rawatpur and Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Workshop, Allen Forest.

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Figure 3: Functional Structure of UPSRTC

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Six tyre retreading plants are established at Gorakhpur, Ghaziabad, Bareilly, Kanpur, Saharanpur and
Allahabad to provide in-house tyre retreading facilities. For repairs and maintenance of staff cars

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belonging to the State Government and the Corporation, a separate unit named Car Section is
established in Lucknow. For imparting training to drivers and technical staff, a Training School is
established in Kanpur.

4.1 Corporate office

 UNIX Servers: In 1990, IIM Lucknow did a vendor selection study for purchase of Unix servers
to be used at the head office.
 Currently there are about 200 PC’s in the head office with Internet connectivity
 Software Usage
1. Microsoft Excel - For data entry purposes e.g. daily collections, kilometers travelled by
buses
2. Visual Basic – to develop local applications to process data
3. .NET - to maintain the UPSRTC web portal
4. C# - to maintain the UPSRTC web portal
5. ASP – to develop and maintain the UPSRTC web portal
Gaps :
 Absence of a local area network (LAN) infrastructure to make information readily accessible
to all departments – UPSRTC does not have a LAN infrastructure connecting its various depots
and offices which poses to be a big problem. Data collected on usage statistics, fuel
consumption remains in the depots and need to be separately synchronized with the central
server which makes information accumulation very difficult. Absence of a centralized data
storage means that the most granular data remains at individual depots while only the
consolidated reports are sent to regional and head offices in the print format.

 Lack of expertise to use information systems present in the office –

The average age of the employees in UPSRTC is around 40 years. Though this implies the
presence of valuable experience in the organization, they also show resistance towards
adoption of new technology. Simple softwares like Microsoft Excel can be used to model
complex problems and solve them. UPSRTC is also capable of purchasing software to improve
productivity. But lack of expertise and trained staff prevents effective and efficient use of such
software.

 Huge pile of paper files are lying around the offices. Fetching any relevant information from
them is a herculean task. Currently any information that is sought is present only in form of
paper documents, which needs to be scanned and sent forward which causes unnecessary
delays. All documents need to be scanned and stored in PDF formats on servers so that
fetching and accessing can be made very easy.

4.2 Depot
 There are 5 PC’s on an average at each depot and every depot has internet connectivity too.
 Electronic Ticketing Machines ( ETMs): The ETM project was outsourced and has been
currently implemented in a limited number of buses. The route information is uploaded to the
ETM at the beginning of the journey from a computer at the Depot. This includes information
related to stops, distance, fare details, etc. At the end of the trip, the day’s collection data is
downloaded back to the system present at the Depot.
Gaps :
 Absence of a centralized data storage means that the most granular data remains at individual
depots while only the consolidated reports are sent to regional and head offices in the print
format.
 ETM’s need to be adopted on a much wider scale as they are a rich data source for vehicle
tracking, passenger information, operational performance of buses. This data can be leveraged
for scheduling and route optimization.

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  Bus database viz no. of kilometers run, remaining life etc are on paper , not digitized.
 Spare Parts Inventory Management: Every depot maintains a significant inventory for
regular maintenance work. Currently there is no system in place for inventory management as
most of the records are maintained on paper. There is a tremendous scope for streamlining
the spare parts’ supply chain.

4.3 Relations

4.3.1 Customers
 Website is currently maintained by omni-NET. UPSRTC wants to get it done in-house. Some
key features of the website are
1. Facility to allow each depot to update its data: Cash collection, distance traveled, fuel
average .
2. Route information, bus schedules, fare information
3. Customer Feedback
4. Online Reservation
Gaps :
 Non-compliance by individual depots in updating the daily collections through web portal
because they prefer the existing system of conveying it over phone.
 Many features like fare calculation do not work properly because of poor maintenance and
lack of timely updation.

4.3.2 Employees
Duty Allocation: Currently a software developed by UPDESCO( Uttar Pradesh Development
Systems Corporation Ltd.)is in use. Drivers have been categorized on basis of performance,
experience and number of accidents into 3 categories : A, B and C . ‘A’ category drivers are
allocated to routes where higher returns are expected thus better quality service is warranted.
There is an HRMS software to take care of employee and performance details.
Gaps :
 The HRMS software is of limited use because it fails to capture the complex issues
encountered in roastering:
1. Varied culture across the state : drivers and conductors have their own preference of routes
2. Resistance to change: A driver plying on a particular route for long is unwilling to shift to
another route if the need arises.
3. Contingency (drivers on leave) planning capability is absent.

4.3.3 Contractors
UPSRTC currently runs over 1000 buses on contract with private players to bridge the demand-
supply gap. The sole criterion for performance evaluation and contract renewal is revenue
generation.

Gaps:
 Revenue figures are not representative of service quality. In fact, most private players run
their buses at overcapacity leading to customer inconvenience. Getting the private buses too
under the MIS umbrella could help in collecting accurate capacity utilization data and thus
keeping a check on unfair practices to ensure uniform service across corporation owned and
contract buses.

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5. Proposed Solutions
UPSRTC does a lot of its business which is very orthodox for these days. A lot of paperwork
and manual intervention in involved which not only is cumbersome but also increases the chances of
errors. We will primarily look into two feasible solutions which are also the most important ones
and discuss a few other improvements which can be implemented down the line.

5.1 Networking within UPSRTC Depots

The depots for UPSRTC are currently not linked in an active manner and they operate as separate
management points, managing buses plying to and fro on their assigned area routes. We believe that
a centrally linked IT system that will serve as data collection point should be employed for better
tracking and analysis.
In the present system, the depots update their revenue collection details once in a day. The process
followed is as detailed below in Figure 4.




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Figure 4: Present Network System

5.1.1 Shortfalls of the present approach

The final information is transmitted a little late at the Central Office.
Extra effort is spend in entering data into computers taking a print and re-entering the
information into computerized format at the Central Office.
No system of letting the depot in charge know of their respective performance relative to
other depots and relative to previous years.
Less visibility on over lapping routes among various depots.

Possible benefits that could be derived from setting a centralized IT management system are,
 Faster updates on revenue status via technologies like IVRS
 Better control on directing buses to busier areas in the state
 Informed decision making on addition of new fleet of buses and the routes they should ply
on
 Easier and faster mode of sending feedbacks to depot heads on their depots performance.
 It may be possible to track overlapping routes for different depots which would help better
schedule the bus timings. This clearly would result in increased cost savings for UPSRTC

One of the proposed solution deals with accurate collection of data, revenues and running buses data
on a day to day basis which can be analyzed further for improvements.

5.2 Revenue Reconciliation Reporting Tool

Revenue collection done at present in UPSRTC involves transferring data from Depots to the centre.
There is not much analysis involved upon this data. If UPSRTC have to come up with improved
service, this data which keeps track of the Revenue generated by a particular bus, on a particular
route at a particular time can be very helpful. But before going into the analysis part of the data we
must ensure that the data is authentic and reliable. For this currently there is no system
implemented. We can have a Tool within the Central server which takes this data from various
depots, feeds it into the database, generates reports and sends it back to executive heads of Depots.
This data capture and analysis involves four steps basically as given below:

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Depots will enter their daily collections through web or Mobile phones
This data will be collected at the centre and reports would be generated back to
individual Depot executive heads on a daily/weekly basis
This report termed as Revenue Reconciliation Report is for Reconciling book data at
Depots with what the centre has on its system
The master data can be used for Route Optimization, Schedule improvement and
possibly Contract Management

Please refer to the Figure 5 given below. Please note the two way arrows from the depots to the
Central office indication exchange of data rather than one way flow.
Route optimization is hardly a thought upon concept in current system. Most of the routes are fixed
and are not tweaked that frequently. Scheduling is more or less fixed for the buses and scheduling
based on revenue optimization and traffic frequency is not done at all. We can use various
Optimization or Operations Research tools to make use of the captured data from various depots and
improve scheduling. A basic data analysis of currently available data from UPSRTC office is done in
this report.

Central Database

Figure 5: Depot Connection with Central Office

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 Bus
Operator Mileage data

2
Mileage and Revenue info
Web-based upload
D1 Revenue
Revenue data
1
Trip level Mileage and Revenue info
Trip info processing at Depot Revenue data
3 D2 Mileage
Depot level summary
Mobile based upload Mileage data

Conventional Reports Updated Mileage

D3

Store Reports
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Updated revenue
D4
RRRT Reports Prepare RRRT Report Analyze Data

Retrieve Reports

Conventional Reports
RRRT Report Analysis information

Corp. Route Scheduling

Headquarters Optimization Unit
(Executives) Unit

Figure 6: DFD for the Revenue Reconciliation Reporting Tool (RRRT), based on the proposed
solution

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5.3 Other Proposed Improvements
 Mobile enabled Revenue Collection - Mobile service can be used most efficiently in transferring
data. It is a cost effective solution. Moreover, it overcomes the resistance of older employees
who are unwilling to learn new software or in some cases learning to operate a computer. This
is a prime concern as the average age in UPSRTC is high and most of them refuse to learn new
technologies but almost all of them are comfortable with use of mobile phones which they could
use to update the collections. This proposal involves having a system placed in agreement with a
Service provider like BSNL, AirTel etc.

 Currently, the IT work (mainly website designing and implementing a new module) for UPSRTC
is primarily outsourced to the company ‘Omni-Net’. Very little IT work is done in-house and this
creates barriers for information flow and efficiency. This work can be taken in-house so that the
business and its implementation can work hand in hand for better results.

 Improvement of Customer Service by installing IVRS. Customers can find out bus timings and
routes and also give feedback through IVRS.

 IT systems can help UPSRTC improve their internal Human Resource Management. Currently
HR data is not at all computerized. In UPSRTC a typical HR issue would be that a particular bus
driver would not want to go to a particular route as it’s far away from his home. They also
cannot directly covey this to the management because of various hierarchy levels. A well placed
Work Personnel data which can help in identifying jobs for employees suited to them rather
than haphazardly slotting would go a long way in improving job satisfaction among employees.

5.4 Digitization of the IIML Transport system

The team spoke to Mr. Sushil and the Infrastructure Secretary of IIM Lucknow to understand and
analyse the existing transport facility at IIML.

5.4.1 Business model

The IIM Lucknow transport system operates two kinds of transport to help the IIML fraternity in
travelling to and from the campus:
- The regular UPSRTC buses
- Institute’s private transport

The regular UPSRTC buses (route no. 33) ply according to the UPSRTC bus timings. In addition to
normal trips, IIML books special trips with UPSRTC for dropping IIML students to railway stations
and airports after exams and for Convocation, bringing participants from railway stations during
Manfest, Varchasva, etc. Income generated by sale of tickets is the source of revenue for the system.
The private transport system consists of 2 Boleros, 2 Tata Sumos and 1 bus. The salaries for the
drivers are however fixed by the government.

Recommendation- Ticketing system is paper based which can be automated to use Electronic Ticket
Machines (ETMs). Presence of ETMs will enable quicker and efficient data collection about the
number of travellers per day, and the pattern of usage which will greatly help in analysis of data to
improvise the system.

Processes
The IIM Lucknow transport system caters to the needs of school students, faculty and officers in
addition to the students. The vehicles operate on a daily basis and make approximately 7 trips to and
fro every day. There are trips that drop and pick up school students to/from schools, market trips on

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Sunday, and daily trips for staff members. The drivers work based on shifts. Tracking of drivers
happens via phone calls.
Today software is used extensively for recording overtime information about drivers and personal
office bills. Even though a software database to map drivers and vehicles is present, it is not used by
the employees since it requires frequent data-entry due to a lot of real-time changes in schedules and
availabilities of drivers. The staff is not very comfortable using software for such frequently changing
data.
Recommendation - There is a pressing problem of employees not knowing how to use the different
software tools available. Hence, the employee must be trained to use these various tools and
softwares

Passenger usage information

The information about the passengers is available at the main gate of the college where tickets are
issued. Information such as the number of passengers coming to and leaving from campus every trip
is available. This information however does not reach the transport section for any analysis of the
consumption pattern.

Structure
Drivers for the different vehicles report to Mr. Sushil Kumar, who reports to UPSRTC. Drivers work
on the basis of shifts and are the metrics for their performance evaluation is mainly the impression
that the superior carries of them. There are no objective parameters for their appraisal.

Relationship with customers

The daily schedule is available on the local websites for the students, but is not very useful at times of
need since students need to login to a PC to check bus timings.
Recommendation-Hence putting up a bus schedule in areas frequented by students i.e. the mess,
hostel bulletin boards, bus stops would be useful for the IIML community as well.

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