Udupi : Work on the Government City Bus Stand, under construction here, will be completed by the end of this year. Low-floor government city buses were introduced here three years ago. Till then, only private bus operators were running the city buses.
However, there was no City Bus Stand and the government buses have been parked in an empty land next to the Private City Bus Stand. Due to the lack of bus shelters, people have to stand in the open under the sun during summer and under their umbrellas during monsoon. In an order to provide a bus stand for government city buses, 34 cents of land, where the previous Department of Public Instruction Office stood, was transferred from the Department of Education to the Department of Transport a couple of years ago.
Later, the Department of Transport drew up a plan to construct a City Bus Stand at a cost of Rs. 4 crore and the construction for a two-storied building began.
M.B. Jayashanth Kumar, Divisional Traffic Controller, KSRTC, Mangaluru, told that the construction of the city bus stand will be completed by the end of this year. The construction work is going on according to the plan, he said.
Meanwhile, the number of government city buses operating here have neither increased nor decreased. At present, 24 government city buses are operating in the city daily. These buses are operating both on the trunk routes and suburban areas. “If there is public demand, we can increase the number of buses,” he said.
In the two-storeyed building under construction, the bus stand will be on the ground floor, while the remaining two floors will have commercial shops.
“Since there is no bus stand, the number of people boarding the buses is few. So we are losing revenue. Once the construction of the bus stand is completed, we will be able to attract more passengers. We can then study the demand and come up with a new plan,” Mr. Kumar said.