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Hyderabad: Travellers burn' as destroyed bus shelters yet to be rebuilt

The city has 2,400 bus stops and a few request stops and stops at newly formed colonies.

Hyderabad: Even as temperatures are expected to soar in the coming days — an increase of one degree Celsius over the normal has been forecast — there are no bus shelters for hapless RTC commuters in the city. ‘World class bus shelters’ have been promised, but they are unlikely to be ready in time for summer as the whole process is still in the preliminary stages.

The city has 2,400 bus stops and a few request stops and stops at newly formed colonies. According to official records, there are only 1,300 shelters in existence within GHMC limits, but the Admini-strative Staff College of India (ASCI), which has been assigned to do a study of bus stops, says that the actual number of existing bus stops is much less than what the records available with the Telangana State Road Transport Corporation show.

Many bus shelters were removed due to the ongoing construction of the Metro Rail, and not a single shelter was rebuilt after the work in that particular section was completed.

Shelters at key bus stops and bus-bays such as Lakdikapul, NIMS, Khairatab-ad, Secretariat, Dilsukhnagar, Secunderabad YMCA, Chilka-lguda junction, both sides from RTC cross roads to Narayanaguda and Musheerabad were removed by the civic body, and 20 months on, they have not been replaced.

The few shelters that exist don’t have the basics like a bench or a roof. Executive director of the Road Transport Corporation GHMC Zone, A. Purushotham Naik, said that the corporation has been requesting the construction of new busshelters since the past one year.

“We require 1,309 more bus shelters in GHMC limits. The GHMC handed over the process (of doing a survey) to ASCI and the study on modern bus shelters is going on,” he said. GHMC Commissioner B. Janardhan Reddy said that a meeting was held on the matter with RTC and ASCI officials on Wednesday.

“We will begin the bidding process soon for the construction of world class bus shelters in PPP (public-private participation) mode. We are expecting the work to begin in three or four months. But the new bus shelters may not be available in summer,” he said.

( Source : Deccan Chronicle. )
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