STREAMLINING ANDHRA PRADESH ROAD TRANSPORT CORPORATION ( APSRTC): AN OFFBEAT PERSPECTIVE OF ANALYSIS AND PLANNING

STREAMLINING ANDHRA PRADESH ROAD TRANSPORT CORPORATION ( APSRTC): AN OFFBEAT PERSPECTIVE OF ANALYSIS AND PLANNING

I waited for 30 minutes at Nacharam village bus stop a few days ago to board a bus towards Mallapur. Not even a single bus out of the huge fleet of RTC buses, was sighted to help me get transported to Mallapur. The wait was both tiring and disgusting. To fuel my anguish, there were a train of buses going in the opposite direction towards Habsiguda. Then suddenly six buses came towards Mallapur. I relieved myself of the waiting pain by taking one bus to my destination. When I got down at Mallapur, quite amazingly four more buses came in the same direction taking count of my candidate buses to 10. I encountered many a similar instance in my life. A group of RTC buses, some starting from different origins and some starting at the same terminal, accidentally all arrive at a given bus stop and crowd it, while there was not a single bus from for half of an hour at the same bus stop. In lighter vein, I used to quip to my friends that RTC buses come in groups to save themselves from the attack of highway robbers in broad daylight on Hyderabad roads.

Higher income group avoids RTC buses because of prolonged waiting time involved in commuting. Commuting by RTC bus requires a common man to waste a lot of his productive time in waiting and providing for uncertainty of bus arrival. If RTC can plan well and schedule the buses seamlessly so that a bus user need not waste a lot of time in waiting and preparation for uncertainty, the buses can be a comfortable recourse to one and all including executives and higher income groups, by which RTC has the potential ot generate a lot of revenue.

Bus scheduling is the key to optimizing the use of resources of APSRTC. Bus scheduling should be more scientific in that at a given bus stop, buses arrive at regular short intervals so that a passenger is sure of getting some bus within a short interval in any direction. It takes a broad and integrated scheduling of all buses that touch a particular point. RTC may develop a software for such scheduling.

I want to give a new insight here. At any given bus stop, APSRTC has to figure out what the average gap is between one bus and the other? Analysis should be made from this perspective for each bus stop. If APRTC can reduce this gap at a given bus stop, people will use more of RTC services because of assurance of arrival of buses. The basis of analysis should be a bus stop but not bus depot.

RTC is doing yeomen service to public plying its buses from and to the most unprofitable locations. Real estate businessmen and politicians took enormous advantage of the RTC. In the absence of RTC, can you imagine the expansion of city to remote points like Hayathnagar, Kondapur, Miyapur, Ibrahimpatan, Vansthalipuram, Ambedkarnagar, Shamshabad etc. Public got enormously benefited by RTC more than any other Government department or institution. Any loss of RTC small or big, is just a social expenditure like any whopping expenditure in any Government department. Are we bothering how much profit is made by education department or health department while spending colossal amounts? Expenditure on RTC operations is no less. While Government munificently gets RTC avoid all strict private-business-like practices in the matter of its commercial operations like issue of bus passes, starting of new routes etc, it is meaningless to insist on profits for RTC. The refrain of many ministers and bureaucrats about RTC losses is unjustified since they are failing to give the required thought to it to make it efficient. RTC losses should not the reason for the proposal for privatization, since they are the product of efficiency of ministers and bureaucrats