How Surat got two-wheeler and auto users to switch to city buses

New Delhi: Surat municipal corporation has set an example in achieving the tough task of getting more and more users of autos and two-wheelers to opt for city buses.
Acombination of savvy pricing and smart technology has meant that the service, Surat Sitilink Ltd, launched less than a year back has succeeded in attracting 93% passengers, many of whom were earlier using autosand two-wheelers.

Surat’s stellar show comes at a time when most city bus entities, including Delhi Transport Corporation, are facing huge challenge to increase bus ridership. In November 2016, the Surat Sitilink got only 3,000 riders per day it increased to 65,000 by August this year — an over 20-fold increase. Average daily revenue also increased from Rs 46,000 to Rs 6 lakh.
Last week Surat Municipal Corporation got the ‘Best City Bus Services Award’ from the Centre at urban mobility conference in Hyderabad. The city has also started work to introduce a fleet of 25 electric buses, which will ply only in the core city area covering 29 km.
Besides keeping Rs 4 as the minimum ticket amount to compete with polluting shared autos, the city administration has also introduced intelligent transit management system for real time monitoring of buses, emergency and other department vehicles. A robust live IT system has been put in place for monitoring from the control centre. The Surat Sitilink has also deployed system for IT-based monitoring of transit violations. It also has a central message publication system in case of any emergency.
“It’s very tough to shift people from four-wheelers to bus system. Only 5% of the people using our BRTS system have shifted from cars. While all our Sitilink buses are normal ones, the BRTS buses are air-conditioned and both these services are in sync with their operation and routes,” Surat municipal commissioner Thennarasan told TOIover telephone.
He added prior to the launch of Sitilink service, private operators used to run buses on 30-40 routes. “Surat is growing at 7%-8% annually and the municipal body needed a good public transport system, which is affordable and efficient,” the municipal commissioner said.
While Surat Sitilink is incurring losses of Rs 7-8 crore annually, which is expected to increase as the number of buses increase, the municipal corporation has a solution. “We collect one-time ‘vehicle tax’ from each new vehicle, which is 2% of the vehicle cost. We get Rs 60-70 crore and this amount is meant for improving transport system. We are going to keep a share of the revenue generated from the sale of additional FSI on properties along the transit corridors. We are also looking at getting additional revenue from advertisements,” Thennarasan said.

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