At last, buses belonging to Road Transport Corporation (RTC) will operate between two Telugu states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana with effect from midnight of Monday.
An agreement to this effect was signed between the officials of both the RTC managements in the presence of Telangana transport minister Puvvada Ajay Kumar on Monday afternoon.
As per the agreement, TSRTC will run 826 buses for 1,61,258 km in Andhra Pradesh every day, while APSRTC will run 638 buses for 1.60 lakh kilometres in Telangana every day. The buses have not been in operation between the two states due to lockdown on account of Coronavirus pandemic.
The Telangana transport minister said there was no change in the RTC bus fares for now.
“At present, the occupancy ratio of the buses in both the states is only 50-60 per cent. Telangana RTC suffered a huge loss of Rs 2,000 crore in the last seven months,” he said.
APSRTC managing director T Krishna Babu said both the RTC would suffer heavy losses, if they were not in a position to run buses for at least one lakh kilometres a day.
“We are planning to overcome the losses by introducing cargo services between the two states. We shall come to an agreement on this separately and once it is signed, we shall run cargo services as well,” Krishna Babu said.
