With no direction forthcoming on opening of temples, officials of the Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation are undecided on resuming operations to Tirumala form Tirupati and are reportedly waiting for a final word from their higher-ups.
“We have no information on resuming Tirumala services,” said APSRTC Regional Manager (Tirupati) T. Chengal Reddy.
Tirupati region is arguably the major earner today, thanks to the Tirumala ghat operations.
The region has a fleet strength of 1,500 buses, covring 5.6 lakh km and ferrying 7 to 8 lakh passengers everyday, of which 421 buses make 1,600 trips only on Tirumala ghat services to transport 90,000 passengers a day.
Buses remodelled
Meanwhile, the fleet is undergoing a sea change to accommodate fewer number of people to maintain the minimum distance between passengers. With the government directing the corporation to get one-third of its fleet strength ready for operations, the Tirupati region swung into action to modify its buses.
The regular buses would be continued to run as they are, with some seats in the middle marked with ‘X’ to indicate that no passenger would be allowed to sit on them. However, the seat matrix in Super Luxury and Ultra Deluxe categories are being altered with the twin objectives of ensuring the mandatory distance as well as accommodating more number of passengers. “Super Luxury will have 26 instead of the previous 35 seats and the Ultra Deluxe bus will have 29 and not 40,” says Tirupati I Depot Manager Praveen Kumar.
New norms
According to the new norms, every passenger should wear a mask. Every bus will be sanitised with sodium hypochlorite after a trip. Similarly, reservation facility will be made available for routes hitherto under non-reservation category, for example the Tirupati-Madanapalle route, so as to enable the passengers book their seats, that are likely to be in great demand due to reduced capacity.