Despite reducing the volume of bus services due to the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic, the AP State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) has managed to stay afloat by relying on its cargo services.
The APSRTC evolved dedicated freight corridors to augment cargo services and the move is yielding encouraging result, according to its Executive Director (Operations) K. Brahmananda Reddy.
The cargo sector has never disappointed the RTC officials who have been seeing a steady growth in the volume of business, thanks to the wide connectivity. To further expand services, the officials held a series of meetings with government departments and suggested that they could rely on their buses for safe and timely transport of goods.
The corporation also re-fabricated some of its buses as dedicated goods carrying vehicles with a GPS live tracking facility. “We have taken contracts from government wings such as AP Seeds Development Corporation. Currently, we are operating these Departmental Goods Transport (DGT) vehicles in 14 select routes identified in high network corridors,” says Mr. Reddy, adding that the dedicated corridors are fetching ₹40 Earnings Per Km (EPK) to the organisation.
The routes have been evolved after a careful study based on the data sourced from the booking orders in the last one year.
Profitable routes
The 14 cargo routes identified from May to September this year are Vizianagaram-Guntur, Srikakulam-Guntur, Vijayawada-Rayadurgam, Kuppam-Vijayawada, Madanapalle-Vijayawada (all both directions), Chirala-Hyderabad, Tirupati-Hyderabad, Tirupati-Parrys and Chennai-Vijayawada.
From May 19 to September 15, these cargo vehicles covered a distance of 5,92,738 km and delivered 2,63,827 parcels, which got the RTC a revenue of ₹2.37 crore. It translated to an EPK of ₹39.99.
The APSRTC was earning ₹18-20 lakh per day while it was operating 45% of its vehicles and, interestingly, it earns the same amount today even after reducing the volume to 25%. The distance has also shrunk from 42 lakh km in the past to 12 lakh km now. “We had to bring down the volume of buses due to the pandemic but the revenue we earn has not changed because of the cargo sector going strong,” says Mr. Reddy.
The RTC is developing a software to handle bulk bookings efficiently.
City services
The EPK for RTC buses in Vijayawada is ₹14 but in Visakhapatnam it is ₹21. “This is because the travel distance is more in Visakhapatnam city which is spread along the coastline,” says the official, informing that in terms of distance, the buses used to cover 4 lakh km per day in the past but from September 19, they have been covering only 1.4 lakh km.
