HYDERABAD: If the United Nations World Cities Report of 2016 is anything to go by, Hyderabad is projected to have a population exceeding 10 million by 2030, but the public transport systems in the city is not growing at a rate to sustain this population. Experts related to the field paint a grim picture. The cash-strapped Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC) and the much-delayed Hyderabad metro rail, together, will be unable to cater to the needs of future, say experts.
For Hyderabad, TSRTC has a fleet of 4,749 buses serving over 9 million people and has over 10,500 buses for the whole state. But the corporation is unable to add more buses in proportion to the population growth, mainly due to fund crunch. For example, in 2013-14 the corporation, on an average, operated 10,288 buses but the following year only 30 buses were put in operation. In 2016, the corporation announced procuring 1,391 new buses for the state.
Of these, 300 were rolled out in 2017 as Vajra inter-city mini buses. But the occupancy rate is stagnant at just over 40 per cent, according to a senior official.
Is Metro rail the answer?
In 2014, Hyderabad had a projected population of 8.4 million people. Come 2013, over 60 per cent of the state’s population is expected to be living in Hyderabad according to the UN World Cities report 2016.
“TSRTC has its financial problems and the state government expects Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) to fill the funding gap. This is not practical as GHMC itself has limited funds,” said GSR Chaitanya, an associate with Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, Chennai. TSRTC’s urban and rural operations are also loss making entities, he added.
So is Hyderabad’s 72-km-long metro rail the answer? A decade old projection by the Hyderbad Metro Rail (HMR) puts passengers per hour in peak direction (pphpd) as 60,000, transporting 15 lakh persons a day. Officials say the projection for 2017 could range above 25 lakh.
“To understand the feasibility of Hyderabad’s metro rail, we just need to look at Bengaluru. On a 50 km stretch, they are expecting only 5 lakh rider-ship in phase-I but their Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation buses carry an average 50 lakh people on any given day. We can expect a similar trend for Hyderabad,” said Chaitanya.