As many as 142 villages falling under the operational area of the North West Karnataka Road Transport Corporation (NWKRTC) have no bus facility yet. The authorities are attributing difficult terrain and lack of road connectivity for inability to run buses to these villages.
As of now, the NWKRTC has provided bus services to 4,492 villages coming under it’s operational area comprising Dharwad, Haveri, Gadag, Belgaum, Bijapur, Bagalkot and Uttara Kannada districts. Majority of the villages which do not have bus services are in Uttara Kannada district.
As many as 92 villages have no bus service in Uttara Kannada. Similarly, 27 villages in Belgaum, 10 in Gadag, eight in Dharwad, four in Haveri and one in Bagalkot have no bus connectivity. According to NWKRTC chief traffic manager S V Hulyalkar, difficult terrain and thick forest are the reason for not providing bus service to the villages of Uttara Kannada and Khanapur taluk (Belgaum), which fall under the Western Ghats.
Though some villages have motorable roads and the corporation is ready to run buses, the villagers are not ready to use them as they have their own arrangements for transportation. “Since the population in these villages is very less, running buses is economically not feasible,” he added. When asked about lack of bus connectivity in plane areas like Dharwad and Gadag districts, Hulyalkar cites lack of motorable roads as the reason. “The corporation frequently conducts road survey on non-connected routes. The divisional controllers of the NWKRTC are constantly in touch with the district administration requesting them to develop roads. As and when they develop roads, we will start bus services. We have no issue,” Hulyalkar said.