VIJAYAWADA: Even as road transport corporations of both Telugu speaking states are yet to take a final call on resumption of interstate transportation, private operators have kicked off their services to Telangana. As many as 150 buses from various parts of Andhra Pradesh left for Hyderabad on Saturday.
“At present, we are only running a couple of buses with 50 per cent occupancy as per the rule. Bookings are less than expected, but it will pick up pace in a couple of days. In a week’s time, things will stabilise,” Narendra, a private operator, hoped. All bus operators have been instructed to adhere to Covid-19 guidelines.
The AP government has proposed to restart the interstate road transportation to the neighbour state in a phased manner. Covid-19 special task force team officer and Principal Secretary (Transport) MT Krishna Babu told TNIE: “We proposed that both the states may cover 70,000 km per day in each other’s territory.”
“As the Telangana government did not respond to our proposal, we asked our counterpart to de-link the new agreement and operate RTC buses once Covid-19 is over. We also suggested that we will continue with the general interstate travel agreement and start the first phase of transportation. A reply from them is still awaited,” Krishna Babu added. “In the pre-lockdown era, the APSRTC covered over 2.5 lakh km in Telangana, whereas the TSRTC covered over 1.5 lakh km per day in AP.”