Autos and taxis in demand as transport department cracks down on pvt cabs

With the Transport Department taking stringent action against Tempo Travellers and maxi cabs following the recent gang rape of a BPO staffer in the City by two drivers, it is the auto-rickshaws and the taxis which are making a killing in the past few days.

With most of the Tempo Travellers and maxi cabs going underground to evade action by the enforcement team of the department, people are now taking cabs and autos on a ride-sharing basis across the City, after 10 pm.

While the Transport department does not have an exact record as to how many Tempo Travellers or maxi cabs are plying in the City, as per an estimate, there are anywhere between 20,000-25,000 of them mostly engaged by the IT or BT firms.

In fact, in the past few days, the department has seized about 350 such vehicles instilling fear among those running the operations illegally. Many of these vehicles which were on hire by IT/BT offices have even abandoned their contracts for the time being and have left the employees in the lurch for their daily office-to-home-commute.

Not only this, many people depending on these vehicles are forced to shell out money from their own pockets and arrange for their rides from home to work and back. Mostly, it is the ride-sharing taxis and even auto rickshaws which have come to the rescue of these employees and are earning extra money over the past four or five days.

Says Deepthi R, an IT professional working in Sarjapur, “For the past three days, the tempo traveller hired by our office to pick up and drop employees has stopped operations. We have been asked to arrange for our own transport for the time being till a permanent arrangement is made for us. So I, along with three of my colleagues living in the same PG, have been going together in the evening in auto rickshaws spending almost Rs 250 for our commute in the morning and on our way back, book an Ola or Uber taxi and split the fares.”

Manjunath, a taxi driver with one of the aggregators in the City, said, “In the past three days, bookings have gone up and mostly these are by office-goers. I used to do six to seven rides a day before but now I am doing almost 10-12 trips daily, ferrying mostly IT or BT employees in Sarjapur, Electronics City, Bellandur and surrounding areas.”