Hyderabad: With the advent of the Metro on the Hitec City route, a survey is being conducted to estimate the effect of the newly-opened Metro corridor on RTC buses.
In a recent move, as many as 50 AC buses were re-routed in line with the Metro and electric buses introduced. The existing AC buses on that route have about 70 to 80 per cent occupancy ratio and re-routing will be based on the reduction in occupancy ratio and other potential demand areas, according to RTC officials.
There are as many as 270 RTC buses in the Greater Hyderabad Zone, including AC buses, running on the Hitec City routes, taking along thousands of passengers on a daily basis. Earlier, when the LB Nagar to Ameerpet Metro routes started, occupancy ratio in buses running on that route remained intact and the buses were not affected, said an RTC official from the operations wing.
Even if there is a Metro on a particular route, there are many passengers who are dependent on the RTC to travel, availing route bus passes at much cheaper rates as the Metro is expensive. Affordability of our services is one of the main reasons why the Metro does not have any effect on our RTC services.
However, some passengers who regularly use AC bus services to travel to the IT corridor might shift to the Metro services, as the latter is cheaper than the AC bus services. As of now, there are a very few AC bus services going on the same route as the Ameerpet-Hitec City Metro corridor, including 218D bus.
A software employee K. Srinivas Rao said, “All these days we had to pay hefty amounts to cabs and AC buses. Now our expenses will come down with the Metro services and we can reach our offices in time without worrying about traffic.”
