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Festive rush, rupee and ruckus
Transport authorities have introduced special trains, buses and flights albeit with increased fares owing to the sudden festive rush what with Sankranti lined up on the weekend. Cashing on this, private travels have doubled ticket prices for their services. Srinu, a ticket conductor of RK Travels in KPHB says, “We are providing four special busses daily.
With Sankranti lined up for the weekend, there is a sudden festive rush seen in all the modes of transportation and cashing in on this, authorities have hiked ticket fares
Transport authorities have introduced special trains, buses and flights albeit with increased fares owing to the sudden festive rush what with Sankranti lined up on the weekend. Cashing on this, private travels have doubled ticket prices for their services. Srinu, a ticket conductor of RK Travels in KPHB says, “We are providing four special busses daily.
The maximum bookings are done online and we have hiked the price from Rs 500 to Rs 700 for non-AC busses and from Rs 800 to Rs 1,000 for AC buses. The rush is seen more from the last three days and we are expecting it to grow in the coming two days.”
Upto 441 special busses have been allotted by the RTC that includes 18 buses from KPHB point.
“More than 5,000 passengers were seen travelling on Tuesday. The number increased to about 8,000-9,000 on Wednesday,” informs Gopi, a booking agent at Ameerpet.
Prasad, owner of a private travels at Mythrivanam says, “We run buses to Guntur and Vijayawada exclusively on festival days.” Speaking on managing the rush, he informs, “We have only online service for booking tickets, which is full for the past four days. Now, we have no bookings left for Thursday and Friday.
Although, we are running special buses, we still have passengers asking for tickets at the last moment.”With most of the private travel houses holding bookings online, many small travel houses are having a terrible time with bookings.
Mohan, a private travels owner at SR Nagar says, “We have not hiked the rates yet. As most of the bookings are done online, passengers prefer RTC this time, which is leaving us with empty seats even during the festive season.”
Rail rush
The same rush is observed with the Indian Railways. Although, there are special trains run allotted by the authorities, yet massive rush is seen at platforms. With increase in bus ticket fares, the middle-class is opting for the railways to reach their hometown for the celebrations.
Consequently, to manage the rush, Railway authorities have doubled the platform ticket fare, hoping that the number of people who come to the railway station to give sendoffs may decrease.A similar situation is seen in the flight fares.
On normal days, the airlines are running their services with ticket fare from Rs 3,000 to Rs 5,000 from Hyderabad to Rajahmundry. Now, it has increased to Rs 15,943. The price hike is expected to increase even more on Thursday and Friday.
The price to travel to cities like Vishakapatnam is now available at Rs 12,000, which may increase in the coming two days.
