The Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) is most likely to scale up its operations from June 1.
Official sources said efforts were aimed at gradually increasing the number of buses in all categories to cater to the needs of the people who had been thronging the Pandit Nehru Bus Station (PNBS) in the city ever since the public transport carrier resumed operations on May 21.
“We may not make a statement at this point, but we are most likely to resume full-scale services from June 1,” said an official source.
Precautions
Amidst several precautions, the corporation, after a gap of 58 days, allowed 17% of its buses out of the depots as part of partial relaxation of the COVID-19 guidelines.
The precautions include liberal use of sanitisers by the passengers before and after boarding a bus, spacing out seats in the bus, removing curtains from AC buses where the temperature is maintained between 24° and 25° Celcius. The corporation plans to install sanitiser machines at the main points across the bus station, a protocol for which has been developed by Hari Prasad, an electrical engineer.
The initial plan was to ply only luxury buses in the first phase, but the officials digressed after realising that people of all sections needed public transport facility.
Utilising the lockdown period to put in place a technology-driven ticket-dispensing system that may help them operate their fleet of buses in a full-fledged way keeping the virus at bay, the officials are trying to avoid a possible situation where the conductors could become ‘super spreaders’ of the virus.
“A decision to this effect has been taken based on the case studies of the transport system being followed by China in Beijing and Shanghai cities to contain coronavirus,” Madireddy Pratap, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director of the corporation, had announced at a recent press conference.
The intention is to achieve at least 90% “ticketless travel” in the days to come, where passengers will not have to buy a physical ticket.
Social distancing
Reducing the number of seats in the buses is among the several alterations made by the corporation.
In Palle Velugu buses, which cater to the needs of people in rural sector, of the total 56 seats, people are allowed to occupy only 35 of them to maintain social distancing. In Express services, the number of seats has been reduced from 50 to 30, in Ultra Deluxe from 40 to 29 and in Super Deluxe, from 36 seats to 26.
Adopting a user-friendly approach, the authorities have also revamped the online booking system, wherein login is not mandatory now and one can book the ticket even as a guest user. Also, more options have been made available for choosing the services (by bus type, sort by departure time and fare).
