Xmas and New Year travel woes: ‘flight fares’ in private buses from Bengaluru
Demanding fares between Rs 3,000 and Rs 3,800 for a seat from Bengaluru to various places in Kerala, private bus operators are again set to make a killing this Christmas and New Year season.
With Railways announcing no special trains even after tourism minister Alphons Kannanthanam writing to the Railway Board chairman, passengers to the State are left at the mercy of the private bus lobby.
In fact, several trains to Kerala announced in the previous railway budgets are yet to be operational. They include the Thiruvananthapuram – Bengaluru (22657/ 58) biweekly service which found mention in the 2014 budget.
All other trains announced in 2014 are already in service. It is alleged that some Railway officials were delaying the launch of the trains connecting Kerala and Bengaluru to help the private bus operators.
The official stand of the Thiruvananthapuram railway division on the issue is that the Bengaluru division was opposing the train services to Kerala citing non-availability of platforms at Bengaluru.
However, this charge has been stoutly denied by the south western railway authorities . “We have already expressed our willingness to run all trains announced in the 2014 budget and have written to the southern railway in this regard,” said south western railway PRO E. Vijaya.
Few Trains to Kerala
A quick look at the number of trains between Thiruvananthapuram and other major cities in the country throws up some interesting figures.
While there are 12 trains from Chennai , 10 from New Delhi, five from Mumbai and six from Ahmedabad, there are only six from Bengaluru.
Where are these trains?
Among the trains to Kerala announced in the previous budgets, the following are yet to start services:
Thiruvananthapuram – Bengaluru, Ernakulam – Rameswaram, Ernakulam – Salem Intercity, Thiruvananthapuram – Howrah daily, Thiruvananthapuram – Mumbai (via Kottayam, Konkan), Thiruvananthapuram – Hyderabad (via Salem, Dharmapuri, Bengaluru)
More KSRTC Special Services
Meanwhile, KSRTC will operate five more special services from Bengaluru to Kerala to meet the demand for seats during Christmas. While two services each have been scheduled to Kozhikode and Kannur, a Volvo bus will operate to Thiruvananthapuram.
In addition, an Express service ferried from Mysuru to Thiruvananthapuram on December 22 and 24. This is in addition to the 72 special services announced earlier.
To ease the travel woes of Keralites during Christmas & New year, especially in view of the lack of adequate number of trains, the Karnataka RTC also has announced several special bus services to Kerala.
The destinations include Palakkad, Thrissur, Munnar, Pamba, Kozhikode and Kannur. However, there are only a few takers for these services as the ticket rates match those demanded by private operators.
