Hyderabad: Cough up more for bus services during festivals

Hyderabad: To generate more revenue and to recover from the financial losses, the Telangana State Road Transport Corporation to collect 1.25 times extra on bus fare during the festival special operations. It is the eight time that the RTC has hiked the fare in terms of fare rationalisation and adding cesses.

According to TSRTC, passengers will be charged 1.25 times of the normal fare for all special type services including Express, Deluxe, Super Luxury, Volvo and all other high-end buses to be operated including inter-state services on special occasions. The government has authorised the corporation to charge up to a maximum of one and half times the fare for special services operated on special occasions. Earlier, there was 1.5 times of the normal fare uniformly for all special type services buses during special occasions like fairs and festivals, weekends, long vacations, jatharas and on any occasion where there is a need to operate additional services over and above the schedule services to clear additional traffic to tide over the exigencies.

However, keeping in view, the post Covid-19 situation and with a view to attract the passengers towards corporation from the private operators, charging of 1.5 times of the normal fare was not resorted to during the recent occasions of Dasara, Diwali and Sankranthi special operations. The decision has yielded good results. "As, the normalcy has been restored in all the fields including the capacity to spend in commuting, it is felt appropriate to restore the special fares in case of special operations other than the scheduled operations," said the official.

It is proposed to restore the special fares as per the guidelines in force for special services operated on special occasions. "It is proposed to limit the special fares to 1.25 times of the normal fare keeping in view of the latest increase in fares due to imposing of different cesses," informed the official.

Recently, the corporation has introduced passenger cess, safety cess and diesel cess to meet the part of increased cost of operations. The increase in fares due to levying of cess as it has stabilised as observed from the increased patronage of passengers in the ongoing marriage season.