Trains, RTC buses fully booked, tickets in short supply

Hyderabad: With festive season round the corner, a large number of people residing in Hyderabad are making all arrangements to go to their hometowns and native villages, reserving seats for a comfortable journey well in advance. Entire seats in all the scheduled buses of Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) have been booked between January 9 and 14.

• 35,000 bus seats booked

• Every day about 12,000 seats are being booked in RTC buses alone

• All night buses on January 13 fully booked

• SCR will operate eight special trains between Secunderabad and Visakhapatnam from Jan 10

•  Private bus operators likely to raise fares by 30 per cent in the coming days

• APSRTC to operate 5,560 special buses from Jan 8 to 13, in addition to 3557 special buses

On an average, about 12,000 tickets are booked daily to Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Nellore, Guntur, Tirupati, Ongole and other towns in Andhra Pradesh. Tickets in most trains towards coastal districts too are fully booked for the next six days. People seem to have booked RTC bus and train tickets in advance as the difference in fare is about Rs 500-1,000 depending on the type of buses.

The AC fare in an RTC bus from Hyderabad to Tirupati is Rs 928 as against Rs 1,600 in a private bus. The fare in a non AC RTC bus is Rs 602 as against Rs 890 in a private bus. The night bus services to almost all the coastal towns are full on January 13. E V Satyanarayana, assistant traffic manager, MGBS says, “APSRTC is operating 5,560 special buses from January 8 to January 13 in addition to the 3,557 scheduled buses. The maximum number of buses is to Vijayawada numbering 180 followed by 96 buses to Ongole.”

 The South Central Railway (SCR) too is operating eight special trains between Secunderabad and Visakhapatnam from January 10 to cater to the rush. Goutami Express, Venkatadri, Godavari and Krishna expresses are fully booked and in most trains, hundreds of passengers are wait-listed. In spite of SCR introducing 34 specials and augmentation of 21 permanent coaches and adding 38,000 berths between November 2014 and January 2015, the demand for seats is still growing. Raghav, an agent at Lakdi-ka-Pul says, “The bus fares in private buses are likely to go up by 30 to 50 per cent in the coming days.

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