Bus operations begin with doubled fares and only a few passengers

Town Post Desk

Jamshedpur: After a gap of around five months, bus operations were re-started all over Jharkhand including Jamshedpur. However, the number of passengers on the first day of re-launch of bus operations remained negligible. The number of travellers is, however, expected to rise in next few days.

The state government has notified Lockdown 4.0 in the state from September 1. And according to the new rules notified, buses have been permitted to operate with a few conditions.

The buses would only operate only within the state. A decision regarding allowing bus operations to other states would be taken later.

Around 3 thousand buses were out of operations since Lockdown 1.0 on March 23, 2020.

Before allowing bus operations on Tuesday, the administration briefed the bus operators about Covid-19 related precautions.

The operators were told about the methods to use safety kits, sanitisers etc.

They were also briefed about the methods to seat passengers on the buses. And also about what precautions the passengers are expected to take.

The passengers did not show much willingness to travel, however, on the first day.

For now, buses would take in only half of the seating capacity and the travellers would have to spend double the normal fare.

Thus, bus operations have re-started with doubled fare.

This may be the reason why few passengers were interested in travelling.

Around 50 buses operate everyday between Jamshedpur and Ranchi.

However, on Tuesday, the buses with 26 allowed seats, after halving the capacity, could not get even a dozen passengers.

Most buses had only 8 to 10 passengers.

The numbers, however, may increase in the next few days.