Rough ride for city’s techies

By Nischith N | NT

Over the last few weeks IT companies in the city have either shelved work from home or settled for a hybrid norm with employees being told to attend at least 2-3 days a week, after the government had lifted many of the Covid-19 curbs. Hence, the traffic on IT corridors has increased, with employees now commuting to office.

However, the BMTC is yet to restore its services on these routes to pre-Covid levels. The Volvo bus services that run on these routes were very popular among the techie crowd, as they could travel in airconditioned comfort and at a much faster pace than ordinary buses.

However, these days only a limited number of Volvo buses are plying on these routes. As a result most of these buses are overcrowded.

“Almost all IT companies are open and they have cancelled the work from home option for the employees. Also, some companies have now stopped offering the cab facilities because of the losses they faced during Covid. So the buses operating to the IT corridor from Banashankari to Electronic City, ITPL, Marathahalli, Koramangala and many other areas, are running at 200 per cent capacity, as only a few buses are operating. The corporation should quickly restore these services to pre-Covid levels as these services are profitable for BMTC,” says Prakruthi Ganesh, a tech company employee who travels daily from Banashankari to Silk Board.

BMTC, at present, has a fleet of 6,769 buses, but it operates only 5,909 buses with 5,218 schedules covering 10 lakh kilometres every day. Moreover, it is running barely one-third of its Volvo fleet. It is currently running only 300 air-conditioned (AC Volvo) buses out of its fleet of 860 buses. It has kept 560 buses off the road since March 2020, because of high operational costs.

A BMTC senior officer, requesting anonymity, said, “There was hardly any demand for the buses on most routes during Covid. But now the demand is high as most of the workplaces are operating with full strength. We have learnt that the Volvo buses lying in depots for nearly two years are in bad condition, with regard to battery, oil and tyres. However, they do not face any major issues as these buses were instructed short distances every day during the lockdown and after. During pre-Covid times, these buses used to cater to people employed in IT sectors. Now we are awaiting orders from our higher-ups to operate with full capacity.”

According to BMTC sources, the Vayu Vajra A/C buses that operate between the Kempegowda International Airport and various city destinations are running at full capacity. “For International Airport we are operating with 60 to 70 buses and also for the Khelo India Youth Games we are operating 180 Volvo buses under Casual Contract & Chartered Services,” officials added. Vayu Vajra buses provide airport passengers a cost-effective mode of transport.

To overcome all the loss, BMTC on December 15 announced to slash AC bus (Vajra service) fares for medium and long-distance by 35 per cent in the city from December 17. In spite of the discount in the fares, BMTC daily revenue remained low in January at Rs 1.8 crore, but it went up to Rs 2.6 crore in February.

According to the recent data, BMTC’s daily ridership has been coming down over the years. It was 51.3 lakh in 2014-15, then it came down to 50.7 lakh in 2015-16; 48.2 lakh in 2016-17; 45 lakh in 2017-18; 35 lakh in 2018-19 and 33 lakh in 2019-20.

Though KSRTC has started to operate all its high-end bus services, BMTC has been slow to restart its Volvo services, commuters are hoping that the latter will restore them soon.