Rising ridership amid Covid-19 pandemic major challenge for RTCs

Rising ridership amid a raging Covid-19 pandemic has come as a major challenge for the transport corporations, which are also under pressure to generate revenue to meet expenditures.

Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) saw the daily ridership touch 11 lakh by operating 5,000 of the 8,200 buses. In the pre-pandemic days, the corporation accounted for 30 lakh riders, including 9-10 lakh students, and operated nearly 8,000 buses.

Overcrowding, passengers not wearing masks and even employees not following social distancing rules have been reported from buses run by the four corporations across the state.

Officials in KSRTC and BMTC said they have given strict instructions not to allow passengers beyond the seating capacity, but admitted that violations were reported. "We are continuously monitoring the situation on the ground and deploying additional buses as per the demand to prevent overcrowding. There may be rare incidents where the buses are completely crowded," a senior official in KSRTC said.

The BMTC is clocking daily ridership of 14 lakh and faces a major challenge in crowd management as, unlike KSRTC, dynamics of the crowd in a bus changes for each kilometre due to multiple bus stops. Still, officials went a step ahead and suspended a conductor for ignoring repeated warnings against overcrowding.

"On the one hand, transport services are essential to people as well as the corporation's revenue. On the other, the new milestones of Covid-19 cases in Bengaluru are making all our standard operating procedures inadequate," a senior official said.

The NEKRTC served a notice to a bus conductor for not wearing a mask while distributing tickets inside the bus scheduled to travel on the Koppal-Mundaragi route. Passengers in NWKRTC buses have taken to social media to complain about the violation of protocols in the vehicles.

The government has extended aid to help the four corporations meet 75% of the expenditure and told them to generate the remaining 25%.

An official said the corporations have no option but to continue the services in the best manner possible. "We are seeing a steady rise in the ridership of all corporations. That means, there are still people who have no option but to use public transport buses," he said.