A Perspective on Vizag
Services being introduced as part of JNNURM
ASRTC Office, January 11, 2010
As part of the JNNURM, 60 more metro express buses would be inducted into city services of the Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC). These buses, each costing about Rs. 30 lakhs would be inducted into select routes within a week. In the first phase 62 metro express services had been introduced and the patronage was good. The APSRTC Regional Manager G Maheswara said that the routes for the new services would be finalized. He said special services would be run to take care of the festival rush of passengers. 6 deluxe and super luxury services were being run daily from Hyderabad. On January 17, it was proposed to run 15 services from Hyderabad. Likewise, 6 special services would run from Vijayawada.
Maheswara said depending upon the demand, arrangements are being made to run special services and will be available at the railway stations to enable passengers to go to their destinations without coming to the APSRTC bus station. The response was being studied to continue the service. On fares for the special services during the festive season, he said passengers would have to pay fifty percent more than that is if the present fare is Rs.400, they have to pay Rs.600 for special buses.
The Regional Manager said that the loss of damage to properties to RTC in the region was minimal and not more than Rs.25,000 due to recent agitations. However, the loss due to withdrawal of services and drop in the Occupancy Ratio was about Rs.6.50 crores. The daily income to the region is about Rs.50 lakh before the fares are hiked. This is likely to go up by about 25 percent after the hike of fares.
The APSRTC, on the whole, has lost about Rs.1.7 crore due to Samaikya Andhra bands and agitations. Later during the month, the decision by the Government to allow fare hike came as a reprieve. However, the Government made a partial withdrawal of the fare hike move. The Visakhapatnam APSRTC has faced criticism that it did not consider the Government revision and continued to charge increased fares.