Vijayawada: Curfew to hit night bus services hard

Vijayawada: The night curfew, which has come into force from Monday in Andhra Pradesh, will affect long-distance passengers who would like to take night services to Hyderabad, Tirupati, Chennai, Bengaluru and other places.

There is still confusion among the bus operators. Normally curfew means no vehicles or people movement should be there. It is not yet clear whether the police will allow buses to move out after 11 pm or not. Secondly, it would also be a problem for the passengers to reach the pick-up points or bus stations as they will have to reach before 11 pm to avoid any harassment by the police.

The auto rickshaw drivers fear that if they drop a passenger around 10.50 pm and want to go back home, the police may seize their vehicles on the grounds of violating Covid restrictions.

When asked, RTC officials and private operators said that they hope that there would be no adverse impact on footfall, but they may have to revise the departure schedules. If the buses can hit the highway before 11 am there should not be any problem in operating the night services.

The outgoing traffic from Vijayawada and other parts of the state would be at its peak from Sunday as all those who had come for Sankranti would start going back to Hyderabad and other places. It may be mentioned that APSRTC is operating 4,145 special services from January 8 to 14. Of the total 1,500 bus services are operated to Hyderabad alone.

A total of 650 bus services are operated to Visakhapatnam, 250 to Vijayawada, 100 to Bengaluru, and 45 buses to Chennai. The other 1,600 services were assigned to all district centres and towns. In addition, about 1,000 private buses are operated from Hyderabad to various parts of the State.

In case of buses coming from Hyderabad or other States, they may have to schedule their timings to reach Vijayawada or other centres after 5 am. The officials are assessing the impact of night curfew as the Government has not released detailed guidelines on Monday.