KADAPA: The Andhra Pradesh Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) is set to add 800 more buses to its fleet in the next two months to ease the travails of the travelling public, according to state Transport Minister Sidda Raghava Rao.
Disclosing this to newsmen here on Sunday, he added that initially 350 buses would be purchased. The APSRTC would operate more bus services among the three important cities -- Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam and Tirupati -- once it acquired the new buses, he said.
The minister said that government proposed to spend `2,960 cr for the construction of new roads and repair or rebuild the damaged ones in the cities, towns and villages across the state in 2015-16 with a view to curbing accidents on the highways and internal roads.
He said that the government would ensure good motorable roads all over the state in the next four years. It would go for the Public-Private Participation (PPP) method for the execution of road projects on BOT (Build, Operate and Transfer) and other bases, he added.
Rao said that in a bid to check traffic rule violations, the Transport Department had launched a special drive jointly with the police department by conducting checks at various check posts and nodal points across the state over the last 10 days. “In these 10 days, the teams registered a total of 32,000 cases of overloading, overspeeding and drunken driving,” he added.
The minister said that the intention was to deter the law-breakers so as to reduce the road accidents. He said that awareness camps would be conducted to educate the people about the need for responsible driving.
When asked if there were any new proposals for the Kadapa district, Rao said that government had sanctioned `2.5 cr for developing a new signalling system and added that tenders would be called soon for the implementation of the same. “New traffic signal poles will be erected in all the major junctions in the district. This will help to reduce road accidents,” he said.
Training for Drivers on Fuel Saving
Vijayawada: Fluctuating fuel prices continue to hinder APSRTC, Vijayawada Region, from coming out of the red. Till the end of February this fiscal, it had registered losses to the tune of `31 crore. Officials said, the APSRTC till now spent `3 crore on fuel per month and with the hike in price of diesel, burden on the RTC had only increased.