In less than ten days of hiking bus fares, the Telangana State Road Transport Corporation has slapped one more fare hike on passengers.
This time the increase was imposed as passenger cess in the range of ₹5 to ₹10 in addition to the prevailing fares for express, deluxe, super luxury, Rajadhani, Garuda and Garuda Plus services. The cess came into effect from Sunday to raise money for creating passenger amenities at bus stations and other facilities of the corporation.
The RTC sources said the amenities proposed include special seating, tables and fans at rest rooms and improvements to reservation counters, cloak rooms and toilets. The government had earlier given permission to the corporation to collect Re 1 per passenger towards the cess but the sum was raised further in view of spiralling prices.
Hence, it was decided to collect ₹5 in express and deluxe buses and ₹10 in super luxury, Rajadhani, Garuda and Garuda Plus services. The ₹10 hike was meant to round off proportionate charges in higher class of services to avoid the problem of small change.
It was only on March 19 that the corporation had hiked basic fare of ₹10 by ₹5 for ordinary, metro deluxe and metro express services in Hyderabad. The fare of Palle Velugu services were also enhanced but they were rounded off to the nearest ₹5. As such a charge of ₹16 or ₹17 was rounded off to ₹15 and ₹18 or ₹19 was made ₹20.
A couple of days ago, the charges of bus passes were also enhanced from ₹950 a month to ₹1,150 a month for ordinary buses, ₹1,070 to ₹1,300 for metro express, ₹1,185 to ₹1,450 for metro deluxe, ₹2,000 to ₹2,450 for metro luxury and ₹2,500 to ₹3,000 for Pushpak services.
