Pvt vehicles take over Mo stops

Bhubaneswar: Express, other private buses, private cars and auto rickshaws are halting at stops meant exclusively for city buses (Mo Bus) run by Capital Region Urban Transport (Crut) leading to traffic snarls and causing inconvenience to commuters.
On a particular route in the city, when the bus stop remains crammed with other vehicles, the Mo buses either have to make room for themselves or skip the stop as a result of which bus passengers are sometimes missing their ride. Crut had taken up the matter with the police but to no avail.
On NH-16 near Jayadev Vihar, a bus stop meant for the city buses is jammed with around 10 to 15 express private buses with their passengers waiting on the benches and the shed to board. The situation becomes so chaotic in the evening that traffic can only crawl on the highway. The stretch from Jayadev Vihar to Nandankanan and from Acharya Vihar to Rasulgarh, private buses halt at the bus stops leaving Mo bus drivers in a quandary.. Dipti Mohapatra, general manager (Crut), said use of bus stops (also called bus queue shelters) should be regulated so that commuters and bus drivers don’t suffer and the city’s public transport looks organised. “It has come to our notice several times that every vehicle other than city buses are parked in front of the designated stops. Our squads and police teams also make surprise checks and penalise the violators. But they (private buses) keep repeating the offence,” she said.
Officials said the commuters who wait only for the Mo buses are the worst sufferers. It also lead to heated arguments between Mo bus staff and that of other buses.
Srikanta Mohapatra, who commutes daily in city buses, said he has to jostle for space at the bus stop meant only for Mo buses.