Five days since its launch, the Shakti scheme hit record ridership numbers on Thursday as over 54.05 lakh women travelled for free on government buses across the state.
Of the total 1,10,49,105 passengers who boarded government buses across the state, the KSRTC alone ferried 36.06 lakh passengers and over 16 lakh of them were women who availed of free bus tickets.
About 33.28 lakh people travelled on the BMTC, over half of them (17.67 lakh) were women who travelled under the Shakti scheme. NWKRTC ferried 24.91 lakh and KKRTC ferried 16.22 lakh passengers, of which women comprised 13.18 lakh and 7.18 lakh passengers respectively.
The scheme cost the government Rs 12.37 crore on Thursday and Rs 32.56 crore in the first four days.
A senior official with the KSRTC said that the transport corporation is still mapping their passengers’ travel patterns.
“We are expecting people to take monthly passes for metro and KSRTC buses so we don’t know their travel patterns yet. We might get a better picture in another 15 days (by July 1),” she told DH.
BMTC expects the daily ridership of women passengers to increase in the coming weeks, even as the ridership has increased from an average of 27 lakh passengers daily to over 30 lakh passengers since the scheme was launched.
A senior official confirmed that if frequent complaints of the unavailability of BMTC buses are flagged, the corporation will increase the number of bus trips along high-density passenger routes.