MTC season ticket fare to go up
Posted on: 26/Aug/2018 7:20:00 PM
The bus fares were revised upwards by the state government of Tamil Nadu on 20th January. The minimum for travel in Chennai city buses was fixed at Rs. 5. The minimum for travel in A/c buses was fixed at Rs. 25 and the maximum fare at Rs. 150.
It was expected that the revenues for the transport department will be up after this revision. However, this did not happen. Revenues continued to be low. Before the fare revision, around 60 lakh passengers travelled in the Chennai city buses. After the upward revision I bus fares, the number of passengers travelling came down to 40 Lakhs.
As a number of express buses were being operated, the passengers avoided travelling in these express buses and preferred to take other transport modes such as electric train, shared autos, etc.
Subsequently, a set of activities have been initiated to increase/improve the number of passengers in the Chennai MTC buses.
Many working employees in Chennai take regular monthly bus season tickets and utilize the same. Monthly season tickets are given for each bus route.
With the number of passengers having already reduced. It was reported on behalf of the higher officials that the number of passengers was using the monthly season tickets.
It was gathered that around 21.5 Lakhs passengers were using the monthly season tickets. It was reported that this affected the daily revenue.
In this situation, MTC has decided to increase the fare of the monthly season tickets. With this, monthly season tickets costing Rs. 1000 will be increased. This amount of increase is expected to be announced shortly.
A transport department official explained that after the recent upward revision in the bus fares, many passengers have resorted to buying the monthly season tickets. There are more than 20 Lakh passengers in this category. Out of this, most employees have been using the monthly season tickets priced at Rs. 1000.
It was reported on behalf of the conductors that the daily revenue has been affected severely because of the usage of monthly season tickets as explained above. If a bus has 20 passengers, around half of the passengers use the monthly season tickets.
