Watch out, the bus you are travelling in might be a defunct one. About 50 per cent of APSRTC’s fleet is over-aged and the organisation has the enormous task of replacing it even while battling severe financial crisis.
The public transport giant is headed for a crucial year ahead.
“About 50 per cent of our buses have crossed the stipulated 6.5 lakh km distance, the yardstick to consider the age of a vehicle. We need to replace as many buses, and this has put us under pressure,” admits N. Sambasiva Rao, Chairman and Managing Director of APSRTC.
Of the total fleet of 12,000 buses, the RTC owns 10,000 buses and the remaining are hired services. Of them, it has to replace 5,000 (over-aged) buses at a cost of over Rs. 750 crore.
“We don’t have so much finance to replace all buses at once, and so we will take it up in a phased manner,” says Mr. Rao.
The corporation is already talking to manufacturers for supply of 2,000 buses. For now, the RTC will replace 1,000 buses, 1,200 other private buses hired by it will also be replaced in addition to purchase of 250 high-end air-conditioned buses.
As part of reforms to bring the RTC back on the rails, the organisation is adding high-end buses in its fleet at a great speed.
Besides the recent addition of 45 Volvo and Scania buses, it went ahead with introducing 50 Indra (a/c) buses on hire.
“In the next three months, we intend to add another 200-250 high-end buses,” says Mr. Rao.
Realising that the RTC’s growth is not very commensurate with the market growth, the authorities have decided to make 2016-17 the year of growth for the organisation by designing routes that can bring profits.
Cannibalising
“This year, we also intend to brand RTC in a big way. Among many other things, we are cannibalising our own products. We have rolled out a new model called Amaravati buses. This will be soon followed by new brands like ‘Ultra Deluxe’ and ‘X-Mini’. The last one will be a 34-seater and caters to the rural masses,” explains Mr. Rao.
Mr. Rao said after successful trial of GPS tracking on a small number of buses, the RTC was all set to implement it on all the 2,900 reservation category buses on February 5.
There are two mobile apps. The first one informs the customer the phone number of the bus driver and the vehicle’s departure time from the destination. The second app allows GPS tracking of the bus movement.
When RTC made history
January 17 this year will go down in the history of APSRTC as an important milestone. The corporation recorded a revenue of Rs 20.55 crore.
“This is the first time in the history of APSRTC we have earned such huge revenue on a single day against the average revenue of somewhere between Rs. 12 crore and Rs. 13 crore,” said Mr. Rao.
After Pongal, the RTC sent nearly 5.5 lakh SMSs to its clients thanking them for extending their patronage.
About 50 per cent of our buses have crossed the stipulated 6.5 lakh km distance. We need to replace as many buses, and this has put us under pressure
N. Sambasiva Rao
CMD of APSRTC
