BENGALURU: Ridership of public transport services, which resumed this week after a gap of nearly two months, is showing some early signs of recovery.
BMTC, Metro rail and KSRTC are all seeing more commuters by the day.
BMTC’s daily passenger numbers shot up from 4.7 lakh on Monday to 8 lakh on Tuesday and consequently, the ticket collection increased from Rs 45 lakh to Rs 91 lakh.
BMTC is running more than 3,000 buses between 6am and 7pm.
Its daily ridership had dropped from 36 lakh in February 2020 to around 25 lakh on April 26 this year, but officials expect things to pick up soon.
Namma Metro’s ridership increased from 41,870 on Monday to 47,540 on Tuesday.
Currently, it is running services only during peak hours (7am-11am and 3pm-6pm).
Before the pandemic, Metro operated between 5am and midnight and its daily ridership was around 5 lakh.
KSRTC officials said that its ridership and ticket revenue went up from 1.1 lakh and Rs 54 lakh, respectively, on Monday to 2.2 lakh and Rs 1.2 crore, on Tuesday.
KSRTC has restarted intrastate operations, except in Mysuru and Dakshina Kannada districts.
It is also operating interstate services to Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
On Wednesday, it ran 93 buses to the two states.
Transport services across the state were suspended on April 27 after the government announced a lockdown to tackle the second wave of Covid-19.
On June 21, buses and Metro rail were allowed to operate with 50 per cent carrying capacity.
Some experts say public transport services are unlikely to regain pre-Covid figures anytime soon as large sections of the office-going population continue to work remotely.
Even after offices reopen, many people are likely to opt for private vehicles over infection concerns.
Meanwhile, BMTC has decided to operate Vayu Vajra airport services on two more routes from Thursday.
The routes are: KIA to Banashankari TTMC and KIA to Mysuru Road bus station.
BMTC has bus services from the airport to Electronics City and Kempegowda Bus Station (Majestic).
A total of 25 Vayu Vajra buses are operational.
Public transport ridership begins to pick up
