Buses resume service, but with lower footfall

Coimbatore: Monday was a different day for the state transport corporation (TNSTC), with the resumption of its bus services after a hiatus of over two months.
An all-pervasive fear of the pandemic among passengers resulted in lower footfall in buses. This forced the transport corporation to cut both the number of buses it planned to operate and the trips that each bus was supposed to make.
A senior TNSTC official said, “as the state government had permitted us to operate 50% of our fleet, we decided to operate 1,019 town and mofussil buses in Coimbatore division. But the number of buses were reduced to 992 because of poor footfall.”
On the first day of resumption of bus services, 375 buses from Coimbatore, 160 from Nilgiris, 279 from Erode and 178 from Tirupur were operated. In Coimbatore, 212 town buses and 103 mofussil buses were operated, the official said.
Many buses had to wait to fill the allocated seat capacity. Based on the demand, the corporation might increase the number of buses in the future, the official said.
A commuter, R Palanivelu, said, “Due to lack of public transportation, I was dropping my wife to her workplace every day in my vehicle. Now that the bus service has resumed, we need not wait for long.”
A bus driver said despite running the bus for the entire day, they managed to earn a little over Rs 1,000, which would not be sufficient to even get a fuel refill.”
M Velankanni Raj, general secretary of Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) said, the minimal footfall could be because the public had assumed that buses would be crowded or they were scared to step out of their houses due to the pandemic.
ends