Bengaluru: Transport Minister Ramalinga Reddy has denied reports that the opening of the Metro Rail's North-South line had heavily dented BMTC's revenue and clarified that the revenue loss of only around two to three per cent.
He told reporters here on Thursday that the corporation had lost around Rs 5 lakh in revenue as the number of passengers using buses had fallen by 2.5 lakh (which was negligible), owing to the new Metro line.
“Everyday 1.15 crore commuters use state owned transport services and of them 52 lakh use BMTC buses. They include those using the Metro Rail too,” he pointed out.
He said the department was redeploying buses affected by the introduction of Metro services to other routes.
“We now have buses plying in Anekal taluk, Harohalli and Bidadi. As we don't anticipate any dearth of passengers for BMTC we are purchasing around 5,000 new buses," he added.
When pointed out about non-availability of feeder buses near Metro stations, the Minister said, “I will talk to the officials concerned.”
Reddy expressed displeasure at the scrapping of JNURM scheme by the Union government. He said he had requested Union Ministers Ananth Kumar and Venkaiah Naidu to make provision under the AMRUT scheme as compensation.
