File picture of a city bus in Bhubaneswar

Bhubaneswar, Nov. 9: Commuters depending on government-run city buses demanded a slash in fares like that of its private counterparts.

After the diesel prices were reduced twice within 15 days, the state government had cut down the private bus fares.

Like the private bus operators, the city bus authorities had also raised the fare in the last week of September pointing that the diesel prices had gone up by Rs 7.50 per litre by that time.

The state urban development department developed an automatic fare revision formula for the city buses and accordingly the new fares were put into effect from September 26. The fare was hiked between Rs 1 and Rs 4 depending on the kilometres one travels in these buses. According to the new fare formula, the minimum fare had been raised to Rs 7 from the earlier Rs 6.

The bus operator Dream Team Shahara (DTS) said that due to continuous diesel price hike between October 2013 and September 2014 with no fare revision, they had to incur heavy losses.

“The upward revision of city bus fare came very late. But within few days of it, diesel prices dropped. So the diesel rate cut was not enough for thinking about a downward revision of fares,” Sudhanshu Jena, chief executive officer of DTS had told then.

When the diesel prices fell by Rs 3.63 per litre on October 19, the officials said that the downward revision of bus fare would be done once the diesel price went down by more than Rs 5 per litre. Again on November 1, diesel rates jumped down by Rs 2.48 per litre in Bhubaneswar. The aggregate diesel price went down by Rs Rs 6.11 per litre within 15 days.

“At least the city bus fare should have gone down to some extent. But the authorities seem not to be worried about passengers,” said Anurag Mallick, a daily passenger. Many passengers even criticised the authorities for not implementing the automatic fare revision formula. They said that though the fare formula had been made to be effective whenever there was a diesel price change, the authorities did not put it into action in last two cases.

“It seems as if the authorities were more concerned about their benefit. They put pressure on the government and brought the automatic formula and applied it immediately. They must use it when diesel price goes down,” said Ruchika Mohanty, another passenger.

The city bus service operates in Bhubaneswar, Puri, Cuttack and Khurda providing transport facilities to around 55,000 passengers on a daily basis of which more than 50 per cent are regular passengers. At present, there are 138 buses plying different routes of these towns and cities.

The bus operators, however, said that though they would not revise the bus fare, they were trying to make the smart cards more effective and appeal people to go for these cards. “Instead of slashing the fare we are going to give discounts to passengers using smart cards. Besides, in the coming days we will try to make the cost of the smart cards nominal or free,” said Jena.

He said that the use of smart card would help both the passengers and bus staff and prevent untoward incidents. At present, there are around 2,000 regular smart card users and the company targets to reach out to 15,000 in its first phase.