The Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) has sought an enhanced share of revenue generated from the Combi-Ticket that facilitates travel on the buses and the MMTS services.
Introduced in 2007, the common ticket priced at Rs. 400 per month, has the RTC and the South Central Railway equally sharing the revenue from it.
At the 8 meeting of the Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (UMTA) meeting last week chaired by the Chief Secretary, the RTC raised the issue and wanted its share to be increased.
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The RTC authorities pointed that the Combi-Ticket price had been increased to Rs.700 and presently the SCR was taking 50 per cent of each monthly ticket sold. The officials maintained that the RTC had revised its fares several times while the MMTS fares were not increased during the period.
Given this, they maintained that the sharing pattern was causing loss to the RTC. A request was made to the UMTA on directing the Railways to take only Rs.200 towards the cost of the monthly ticket and let the RTC take Rs.500.
A. K. Khan, APSRTC Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, cited the acceptable practice in other countries where common ticketing system was shared based on the individual transit systems’ fare and length of travel. At the same time, the revenue collection and clearance was handled by an independent agency.
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N.V.S.Reddy, MD, Hyderabad Metro Rail, said initially a special purpose vehicle was proposed for the MMTS project between the Railways and the State government. The Railways had already agreed on this and the government needed to take it forward, he said.
Minnie Mathew, who chaired the meeting, requested the Principal Secretary (MA&UD) to take up the matter and expedite necessary action for its approval. The Hyderabad Metro Rail has also been asked to initiate action to have a common ticket of Metro-MMTS-Bus to ensure there is a Unified Public Transport Ticket when the Metro starts functioning.