Big rush to AP chokes bus, railway stations & toll plazas

Hyderabad: Railway stations and bus stations are bursting at the seams as people in large numbers are visiting their villages in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh for Sankranti celebrations.

This is normal situation every year this time, but no special efforts are being made to meet the high demand and mitigate the problems of the passengers.

Though the educational institutions have declared holidays from Monday, being second Saturday, people chose to leave the city from Friday night.

RTC buses, private buses and trains are packed to the brim. At Secunderabad railway station, people were seen trying to enter the train through windows.

Despite abnormal hike in the rates of private buses and RTC buses as well as train tickets, there has been no fall in the rush of passengers.

Many are even using their personal vehicles to go to their hometowns and this has resulted in great confusion at the toll plazas.

With huge number of cars hitting the highways, vehicular traffic came to grinding halt mainly on Hyderabad – Vijayawada highway at the toll gates.

Despite the government introducing the Fastag scheme to pay the toll tax through online to prevent delays at the toll gates, the toll managements struggled hard to clear the heavy vehicle traffic since morning.

Pantangi toll plaza near Choutuppal in Nalgonda district witnessed heavy rush. Though all 16 counters at the toll plaza issued tickets for vehicles heading to Vijayawada, traffic came to a halt for 2 km which led to heavy traffic jam in both directions.

Situation at other toll plazas like Korlapadu near Nakrekal was also similar. People complained that despite fastag, it was taking more than 30 minutes to cross the toll plazas. The TSRTC is running nearly 1,500 special buses to clear the extra rush at Central bus station and also at Jubilee bus stations.

Most of the seats were booked in advance and the people who did not reserve their seats were struggling to catch the bus. RTC officials said that the occupancy ratio in the special buses is 100 per cent despite 50 per cent increase in the fare.

The South Central Railway is running 400 additional trains to different places in Telugu states to clear the extra rush. A passenger leaving for Visakhapatnam along with his family said that he booked tickets a month ago but still he was listed in RAC quota.

He said he was happy that at least he could find some place to sit and travel while there were many who were virtually struggling to get into the train. A woman passenger expressed anguish over not getting tickets in Tatkal.

Taking the advantage of the scarcity of buses and trains, the private bus operators are fleecing the passengers particularly those going to north coastal Andhra districts like Visakhapatnam, Srikakulam and Vizianagaram.

The bus operators were fixing the rates based on the rush. The fare to Visakhapatnam on Saturday was around Rs 2,700.

Airline officials said that the airfares from Hyderabad to Vijayawada was anything between Rs 6,000 and Rs 15,000. To Visakhapatnam, it ranged between Rs 8,000 and Rs 19,000.