VIJAYAWADA: The Andhra Pradesh Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) now has its own building for its headquarters in Vijayawada, paving way for the full-fledged operations of the public transport giant from the city, now a temporary administrative seat of the state.
Sprawling building spread over 45,000 square feet area was formally inaugurated by the chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu at Pandit Nehru Bus Station (PNBS) on Monday amid fanfare. The administrative office has been named NTR administrative block since it was the former CM NT Rama Rao who took the initiative to build PNBS in two-and-a-half decades ago.
The newly constructed administrative block has three floors and can easily accommodate 500 officers and staff, who will be shifted from Bus Bhavan in Hyderabad to the new headquarters in a phased manner by June 25. The building was constructed at the cost of Rs 10 crore and was completed in just nine months.
All the 500 officers and staff members came to Vijayawada on Sunday to work on Monday and Tuesday at the new headquarters on a temporary basis and will be relocating permanently by month-end. The building will be accommodating ten crucial wings, including operations, mechanical, information technology, accounts, stores, legal cell, civil engineering, vigilance and enforcement, marketing, commercial, statistics and personnel departments.
The chief minister reiterated his intention of making the APSRTC the leading public transport entity in the country in the next three years. He exhorted the officials concerned to ensure optimum utilisation of the assets to create additional revenue sources to tide over the accumulated losses.
CM inaugurates city bus port
The Chief Minister inaugurated the city bus port on the PNBS terminal, which was constructed at a cost of Rs 1.2 crore. The city bus port will accommodate nearly 2,000 passengers. He launched the ticket-vending machines, intelligent ticket issuing machines, kiosks for live tracking of buses and ticket booking through mobile app. With the help of the mobile app, the passengers can get facilities of live tracking of district and city services, send an SoS message to emergency services like police, 108 and others.
Miniplex at PNBS
A miniplex with food court facility, first-of-its-kind in the country, was inaugurated by the Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu here Monday. It is located at the arrival block of PNBS. The Rs-1.3-crore project is owned by Y -Screens Entertainment India Limited. Spread over 4,356 square feet area, the miniplex will have two screens with seating capacity of 130 each. 3D technology and satellite-based screening would be used for screening movies. The food court is an added advantage to the moviegoers. The ticket price is fixed at Rs 80 per head. After inaugurating the miniplex, the Chief Minister purchased a ticket and viewed Telugu film ‘Aa Aaa’ today. He spent 10 minutes in the cinema hall and appreciated the arrangements.
Live TV in Amaravati Buses
Amaravati (Scania) buses being operated to Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore from Vijayawada will now feature live TV facility. Every seat in the bus will have a mini screen, just as in some flight services. It will act as a personal entertainment hub for the passengers for the duration of their journey and they can access music, news, video of their choice, instead of watching the same fare dished out on the twin monitors in the bus. The facility was launched by the Chief Minister on Monday.