The Andhra Pradesh Government is putting together a plan to monetise and extract more revenues from its bus station complexes in Tirupati, Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam by turning them into massive complexes on a ‘Build, Operate, Transfer’ basis, said AP Transport Minister Sidda Raghava Rao.
On his first visit to the AP State Road Transport Corporation’s headquarters ‘Bus Bhavan’ here on Wednesday, he said there was need to improve passenger amenities and add more facilities, including shopping complexes and multiplexes. He, however, hastened to add that there was absolutely no truth in reports that the corporation was being privatised.
There were plans to transform the APSRTC’s properties and make them multi-functional entertainment centres, he said, adding that for example, they could have underground facilities including bus bays and things like that. He agreed that after personally inspecting at least six bus stations across AP, he was firmly of the view that much needed to be done on the sanitation front and said he had asked officials to come up with a comprehensive plan to improve things, at every bus station.
About 12,000 buses of the APSRTC now were transporting 54 lakh passengers, criss-crossing about a crore km every day with an average of 8 accidents a day. The endeavour, he said, was to bring accidents to ‘zero’ and tall though the order was, the Minister said he was holding meetings and bringing together officials of the police and transport departments and APSRTC officials on this.
Mr. Raghava Rao promised that enforcement would be stricter than ever and multi-disciplinary teams of officers would be on the job, cracking down on overloads, and illicit operations by private buses on RTC routes.
