HYDERABAD: A traffic system unique to Hyderabad has now come under the lens of TSRTC officials, apparently for adding to the corporation’s financial woes.
In a bid to reduce the manpower required to monitor traffic in the city, the traffic police had made the decision to remove the trouble at the junctions by ‘unmanning’ them, and instead promoting U-turns. The idea, however, has been costing the TSRTC a sum of Rs 7,50,000 to Rs 8,00,000 everyday.
RTC buses undertake over 42,000 trips on any given day in the GHMC area. These U-turns, according to officials, roughly add around one km more to each trip, resulting in an additional burden of over 42,000 kms.
Since TSRTC’s average mileage per litre of diesel is 4 km, the corporation ends up spending over 10,000 litres just on the U-turns. Paying for this at Rs 75 per litre, the RTC has to bear an extra burden of Rs 7,50,000 every day on all the buses they employ within the GHMC limits. In a year, this would translate to about Rs 26 crore.
While the sum may sound small, it has been a significant addition to the burden borne by TSRTC that has been earning little profit. What makes matters worse is that it significantly increases the trip time, that is the time spent by one bus on one route, thereby reducing the efficiency of the bus as well.
This loss of man-hours is an additional burden faced by not only the RTC, but also several other thousand commuters.
Though the concept of promoting U-turns has been around for a while now, experts state that the idea is unscientific and unsuitable for Hyderabad roads. In the city, a critical part that enables these U-turns -- the ‘bulge of road’ -- is missing. This bulge is required for the benefit of the vehicles moving straight, as those taking the U-turn would end up taking more space to turn around.