Residents would no longer have to haggle with autorickshaw drivers over route fares after tariff cards are pasted on the three-wheelers from next week.

The Patna Zila Auto Chalak Sangh that operates around 20,000 vehicles would seek approval from the district administration in this regard before starting the system.

“Autorickshaw drivers are often given a bad name for charging excessive fare from the passengers. We have decided to put a fixed tariff structure in place and display it in the vehicles. We would send a letter in this regard to the district administration to seek their authorisation on the rate card to be displayed on the vehicles, so that people would accept it readily,” said Raj Kumar Jha, secretary, Patna Zila Auto Chalak Sangh. According to a notification issued by the transport department dated February 14, 2013, the autorickshaw drivers need to compulsorily display the fare structures inside their vehicles. The notification was primarily issued for revising the fare structure for autorickshaws, tempos and similar four-wheelers used for public transport nearly after 20 years.

Though the Patna Zila Auto Chalak Sangh has proposed to display the fare structure on the vehicles, the Auto Men’s Association has refused to do so. “The system of displaying rate card on the autorickshaws was proposed to be implemented if the recently notified tariff revision was put into place. However, we had told the transport department that the revised tariff is faulty and it needs to be amended. Since the department has not taken any steps in this regard, we are charging the old rates and displaying it would not be of any use, as it is not authorised,” said Subodh Kumar, president, Auto Men’s Union.

Around 5,000 autorickshaws are associated with the Auto- Men’s Union.

Jha, however, claimed that they would write a letter to the district administration for authorising the display of rate cards on Thursday and wait for three to four days for a reply. “Even if the district administration does not authorise it, we would start pasting the rate card from next week,” he said.

According to the notification issued by the transport department in February, the fare for travelling on a reserved autorickshaw is Rs 15 for the first 2km and Rs 7.5 per every kilometre thereafter. For shared vehicles, it is Rs 4 for the first 2km per person and Rs 2.5/km per head thereafter. However, the revised tariff is not followed.

However, residents would continue to face the menace of overloading. “We had called a strike on Wednesday against the rampant action taken by the administration on the autorickshaw drivers against overloading. However, the issue got resolved after the traffic police and the transport department agreed to hold talks with us on the issue. We would run the vehicles as usual till any decision is made after the talks with the authorities,” said Jha.