TSRTC officials at a loss to promote Vajra service

First cashless bus service in India

​Warangal: The TSRTC officials are facing it strenuous to promote Vajra- mini A/C bus services launched by TSRTC between Warangal and Hyderabad, among the commuters.

The services dubbed as the ‘first cashless bus service’ in India was launched made operational on May 5.Going by the concept of the services, passengers intending to avail Vajra services have to download TSRTC App, which has been developed specifically to operate mini-AC bus services or by logging into www.tsrtconline.in as no ground bookings are allowed.

Confining the ticket bookings only to online mode has made it difficult for the RTC, as online bookings are not taking place as expected. According to the official sources, the average occupancy ratio of the services has been below 60 per cent.

About 60 trips are being operated between Warangal and Hyderabad daily at a frequency of one service for every 20 minutes. With on-line bookings being fewer most of the buses forced to move between the cities with lesser occupancy initially.

In addition to this, many passengers have wanted spot booking of tickets. This has made the RTC Warangal region officials to look for alternate measures to increase the occupancy. A few days after the launch of the services with the consent of the higher ups, spot bookings introduced at Kazipet in Warangal and at Uppal in Hyderabad. This allowed the occupancy to move up much to the relief of the officials.

42 per cent bookings at Uppal point and about 30 per cent bookings at Kazipet are spot bookings, the TSRTC regional manager T Surya Kiran told The Hans India on Monday. ‘Now we are planning to offer incentives to those who book tickets in online mode and a decision would soon be taken up in this connection’, he said. The incentives could be offered in the form of virtual money offer or concession in ticket, he added.

According to the RTC official, so far 19,000 persons have downloaded the App. The services going towards Kukatpally and Mehdipatnam in the State capital are doing well in terms of online bookings while it is dull when it comes to services connecting Saroornagar and AS Rao Nagar.

Survey launched to get feedback
In a bid to get the passengers’ feedback on the services and to learn why online bookings are not taking on expected lines, the RTC has launched a survey four days back involving the MBA students of National Institute of Technology Warangal (NITW).

The survey would get info on the passengers’ satisfaction, why the App is not being downloaded as expected, measures needed for the success of the services and others. Based on the feedback appropriate measures would be taken to make Vajra service a success, Surya Kiran noted.