People hang on to packed buses in rural Delhi

Thousands of residents of rural areas in Delhi’s outskirts are facing severe transportation problems due to lack of buses of Delhi Transport Corporation.

Areas like Chauhan Patti, Sonia Vihar, Sabhapur Village, and many surrounding areas have a few bus routes.

When the Deccan Herald visited the area to check the DTC service following complaints by the locals, it found that for more than half an hour, only one bus was seen plying on the route with people hanging through the doors.

At about 2-2:30 pm there was only one bus was seen plying on the route and then at about 4:30 two buses were seen running back to back flouting the rules of DTC.
Moreover, the commuters say, the drivers never follow the rules and time table.
“The orange DTC buses are the worst one. They never follow the schedule,” said Rajesh Chauhan, a resident of Chauhan Patti.

The Corporation is running cluster buses in the area which are notorious for rash driving and flouting the rules. Many students and other daily commuters were seen hanging through the doors of the buses.
The students, largely from the senior classes of government run schools, complain that they face the transportation problem daily.

Students’ woe

“There is no bus service in the government schools. In this era of technology when even a rickshaw puller has a high quality mobile phone, we don’t have enough buses to ferry students to the schools. It happens daily and we are used to it,” said Zile Singh Chauhan, a student of class XII.
This reporter saw a bus running with its doors open giving a chance to more people to hang through it and risking their lives.

A senior Delhi government official said the condition cannot change till the arrival of new buses in the fleet.

“Some 92 per cent of the DTC buses leave the depots daily but many of them face breakdown. It’s not possible to divert any other route’s bus to the area. We have to wait till procurement of new buses,” said a senior official.

The DTC has 4,700 regular buses and some 1,500 cluster buses which are being operated by the Delhi Integrated Multimodal Transport System (DIMTS).

The city requires some 11,000 buses but the DTC has less than half of it on the roads.
DH News Service