More bus services sought in Visakhapatnam

VISAKHAPATNAM: Though the port city is expanding rapidly, public transport facilities have failed to upgrade at the same pace, making people residing or working on the city outskirts to suffer a lot. With the number of houses rising and also new industries and offices coming up, the demand for buses has gone up. The Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation runs about 630 buses in the city limits, which is inadequate in proportion to the number of people depending on public transport. The city population has also jumped to around 20 lakh.

Public transport facilities for IT SEZ, Duvvada Railway station area, Airport, Pendurthi-Sontyam route, among others have remained very poor, giving a tough time to IT companies to operate from there. “We are really fed up now after the APSRTC has not started plying buses to IT SEZ, despite our consistent demand for the last after five years. So, we have arranged our own vehicles for employees,” said O. Naresh Kumar, CEO of Symbiosys Technologies located at IT SEZ.  

“Inadequate transport facilities, sometimes, discourage people to work here. Even companies also find it hard to operate here,” he added. A startup founder, Ravi, said RTC buses ply for only two trips a day. “A bus is being run by a private operator, but that is not sufficient for the employees. We have to wait for about one hour if we miss one bus,” he added.

Deputy chief traffic manager G. Satyanarayana said they had trimmed down some services due to poor occupancy ratio. “We are assessing the situation now and will soon launch more services to the outskirts as per demand,” he added. Another 200 buses would be required to meet the demand as the city is expanding with many new routes coming up.