Vehicle registrations still far below pre-pandemic levels

The pandemic fears have forced many to ditch public transport but the shift to personal vehicles is yet to reflect in vehicle registrations which remain far below the pre-Covid average.

The current daily ridership on BMTC buses stands at about 15 lakh, as against the pre-Covid average of 37 lakh. Metro trains that earlier ferried nearly 4.5 lakh people a day are far away from reaching the one-lakh mark.

Officials earlier speculated that rising Covid-19 cases had forced many to switch to personal transport. Senior officials in the transport department have, however, called for scrutinising this hypothesis given that the number of vehicle registrations, which indicates new vehicle purchases, is still too low.

Last year, RTOs in Karnataka registered 13.94 lakh vehicles, or an average of 1.16 lakh new vehicles every month. This upward trend had continued at the beginning of 2020. Even March saw 1.42 lakh vehicle registrations. The lockdown drastically brought down the numbers to 17,188 and 37,851 in April and May, respectively.

“We had hoped to bounce back in June when RTOs reopened and the monthly vehicle registrations touched 92,000. But we barely crossed the one-lakh mark in September. The hypothesis that more people will buy vehicles to avoid using public transport has proved to be false,” a senior official said.

Two-wheeler registrations have hovered around 70,000 and may hit the last year’s average of 82,000 next month. The only exception is the registration of cars, whose number crossed 13,000 last month, surpassing the last year’s monthly average of 12,700. However, considering the seasonal variations in vehicle purchases, officials say they do not anticipate a lasting surge.

Vehicle registrations, especially those in the luxury segment, have been the major source of revenue for the transport department, which fell short of meeting the revenue target for the first time last year in the recent past. “We have proposed to cut down the revenue target by about Rs 1,500 crore (from Rs 6,500 crore). But the multiple crises brought by Covid will make it difficult for us to reach even the revised targets,” the official said.

He said October and November would see highest registrations due to festive offers combined with the auspicious time. But the trend in the last few months suggests that not many people are investing in vehicles due to economic insecurity. The increasing acceptance of the work-from-home option is another reason why people won’t hurry to buy vehicles, he added.