#Bus4Change Twitter Chat on World Cities Day

by | posted in: Maharashtra Bus Campaign, Public Bus Campaign | 0

On the World Cities Day, Parisar conducted a twitter chat on the theme Better Bus, Better City, Better Life. People participated in this unique conversation, using the hashtag #Bus4Change, and reflected on why buses are central to making the cities of Maharashtra sustainable, liveable and climate-resilient. 

The tweet chat was conducted between 4 pm to 5 pm (IST) on 31 October 2021 which is observed as World Cities Day. The Maharashtra Lakh  Ko 50 campaign released two petitions in July 2020 to demand from Maharashtra Chief Minister, Shri Uddhav Thackeray, a policy and budgetary commitment to make a formal bus service mandatory in all 27 Municipal Corporations, and subsequently achieve a minimum of 50 buses per lakh urban population. This event provided an opportunity for us to create twitter engagement with both citizens and decision-makers around the role of buses, and build a community which supports this campaign and its demands. To know more about the campaign and the central demands, read the brochure here. 

 

 

 

One of the key messages was the role of a bus transport policy, and initiatives from the state and local government, in making the cities climate-conscious and reducing the carbon footprint. This was subsequently linked to the need of considering bus services an essential service, the provision of which must be an obligatory function of the government. Further, many responses underscored the multiple benefits of buses for daily commute in the city – from reducing congestion to providing a sense of belonging to the city, from ensuring access to education and livelihood to people from different sections of the society to its role in road safety, from helping cities achieve sustainable to improving the quality of life of citizens.

Here are some of the most important responses to our questions:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Additionally, while the participants acknowledged the importance of buses as well as the fact that buses have been largely ignored as a concern by both citizens and government, there is an appetite to mobilize larger citizenry to raise the demand for public buses.

Some of the participants in the #Bus4Change twitter chat were: