The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : BMTC commuters get a raw deal

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Thursday, Jul 09, 2009
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

BMTC commuters get a raw deal

Anil Kumar Sastry

With the latest fare revision, people travelling short distance have to pay more

BANGALORE: When the diesel price went down by almost Rs. 5 in January this year, Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) reduced the fares by just Re. 1 for select destinations.

However, now that the diesel price has gone up by Rs. 2.20, the corporation has increased the fares across all destinations except the first three.

This means commuters have to pay almost Rs. 2 for every km of their journey. With the present revision, Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation has also done away with different fare structures for city, suburban and Pushpak/ Suvarna services.

And this has been done not by reducing the fares of Pushpak/ Suvarna services, but bringing the fares of ordinary and suburban services on a par with the fares of this premium category of service.

Notification

The July 7, 2005 government notification governing the fare structure of stage carriages in the State stipulate that the minimum fare should be Rs. 4 for the first stage of 2 km and 60 paise for every subsequent stage of 2 kms. However, Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation modified the stage structure to its convenience so as to generate the maximum revenue when Upendra Tripathy was its Managing Director and the practice still continues.

For a distance of just 5 km between BHEL and Majestic on Mysore Road, the commuter will have to shell out Rs. 10, translating into Rs. 2 per km.

BMTC officials argue that the fare revision was inevitable in view of the increased costs of inputs and payment of dearness allowance.

Regarding higher fare for short-distance travel, the officials said a large number of commuters, particularly the poor, travel long distance and the fares for this category has not been increased much.

On the other hand, Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation’s move to abolish differences between monthly passes of suburban services and Pushpak/ Suvarna services and to allow pass holders of city services to travel in suburban/ Pushpak/ Suvarna services within the city limits from August has been welcomed by commuters.

KSRTC

The Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC), North West KRTC and North East KRTC too adopted a similar strategy.

After the drop in diesel prices in January this year, the corporations reduced the fares by just 2.7 per cent for Express services and by 6.7 per cent for mofussil services.

Premium services

As for the premium services – Rajahamsa and Volvo – the fares did not drop at all.

Reacting quickly to last week’s diesel price increase, these corporations increased the fares by 3.56 per cent with effect from Wednesday across Express and Premium services.

This despite the fact that the cost of diesel is still lower than what prevailed in June 2008 which was Rs. 39.76. At that time the road transport corporations had increased the fares by around 10 per cent.

So now, the fares of premium services should have remained untouched.

However, a senior officials of the KSRTC defended the fare increase stating that the corporation did not touch fares of ordinary buses that service predominantly rural areas.

“Ordinary services account for nearly 30 per cent of our operations and we did not intend to burden the rural people,” the official said.

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