The inter-city, low-floor bus service run by the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) on Monday and Tuesday from Thiruvananthapuram to Ernakulam earned Rs.75,000 a day for the corporation. This amount was earned from two buses and three trips operated on both days.
Senior officials of the KSRTC told The Hindu here on Tuesday that the new service proved very popular with the commuters. “We were running these JNNURM buses at a loss of about Rs.1 crore a day. We needed to look for additional sources of revenue,” a top KSRTC official said.
In addition to the Thiruvananthapuram-Ernakulam service, KSRTC also operated buses from Kochi to Kozhikode, Nilambur, Kottayam, Pala, and Thodupuzha.
When asked about the stipulation in the JNNRUM guidelines which specified that financial assistance was being given under the scheme to operate city service buses, an official said he was not aware of any such stipulation or restriction in the JNNURM scheme.
The geographical structure of the State was linear and that it was like one large urban super-structure with towns and cities situated close together, leaving little space for an area to be termed rural, the official said.
“If you look at Tamil Nadu, there is at the very least, a gap of 25-30 km between two urban areas,” the official said. A number of commuters travel these routes daily and this system would also seek to serve its original purpose of curbing traffic in city roads by reducing the number of private vehicles of commuters who come into the city, he added.
The civic body representatives of both Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram had staged agitations on Monday, blocking the rollout of these inter-city buses. Irked by the KSRTC’s action,Left Democratic Front councillors in the Corporation gheraoed KSRTC Executive Director (Operations) K.M. Irshad.
Source: The Hindu
