Frequent breakdowns upset city bus commuters

Hyderabad: With frequent breakdowns of city buses, people who commute by Hyderabad RTC city buses are facing a lot of inconvenience. Regular commuters who use city buses are frustrated lot because city and suburban buses constitute primary mode of transport in Hyderabad and passengers are left with no alternative. It has been nearly six years since RTC has upgraded its fleet. As a result, authorities are forced to ply old rickety and poor conditioned buses on Hyderabad roads. Some of the old buses however are being replaced with rented buses. 

Hyderabad requires nearly 7,000 buses to meet the demand, but only half ply on city roads. With increasing city population, the problem may worsen even further if the fleet is not upgraded on an urgent basis. Except for 80 metro luxury buses, city RTC has not added any buses in the last few years. At present, there are 4,000 city buses. Every year nearly 200 buses are condemned as they reach expiry period. 

In the past five years, nearly 1,000 buses were condemned but they were replaced with only 500 rented buses. The buses which were released under JNNURMA, which are run as Metro Express and Metro Deluxe buses, have failed to live up to their expiry periods due to their poor quality. In the past double-deckers and vestibule buses used to meet a lot of passenger demand; one double-decker or vestibule bus was enough to empty the entire passengers waiting in bus stop. But the buses were banned due to various reasons.

Frequent breakdowns have caused a lot of inconvenience to city people. Quite often, buses stop in the middle of the roads or near traffic signals causing frequent traffic jams.  RTC authorities are left clue less with the situation. Priyanka, an undergraduate who resides in Mehdipatnam, demanded that authorities should take necessary steps to identify buses with poor condition and replace them with new ones. She lamented that she could not attend interview due to breakdown of the bus she was travelling. 

She was travelling from Mehidipatnam to Secunderabad in number 5 bus to attend interview. Poor condition of buses has also left many a driver dismayed. Many drivers are forced to drive bad condition buses. They find it difficult to keep up with the bus schedule due to poor condition of the buses. If any bus loses control due to technical snags causing accidents or damage to the bus, drivers are forced to pay from their pockets, resulting in a lot of stress among drivers, a driver named Nagesh lamented.

BY Ramesh Valmiki