Wednesday, 21 October 2020 | PNS | Dehradun
Even after the Uttarakhand Government normalised the fares of the city buses for over a month now, the number of city buses operating in Dehradun is still low. When the fare of the city buses was doubled by the authorities, most of the passengers preferred three-wheeler vehicles and Vikrams while limiting the use of the city buses. At that time, the city bus operators had then alleged that the three-wheeler operators were luring the passengers by slightly decreasing their fares than the city buses which the owners of auto rickshaws and Vikrams denied.
However, only 20 to 25 buses are presently running in Dehradun out of the total 270 city buses even after the fares returned to normal. The bus operators are still blaming the three-wheeler operators. According to the president of Dehradun Mahanagar City Bus Seva Mahasangh, Vijay Vardhan Dandriyal, there are only 270 city buses but there are thousands of Vikrams in the city that run illegally here. “Only a handful of the city buses are running in the city which is not by our choice. The number of Vikrams operating in the city clearly exceeds the approved number of the Vikrams but no action is taken against them. If it continues like this, there will be a grave danger over the existence of the city buses in Dehradun,” said Dandriyal.
Meanwhile the locals stated that they prefer three-wheeler vehicles as public transport because they are fast and do not wait long for more passengers. “I used to travel by city buses before the lockdown but since their resumption, the buses are taking longer to fill passengers and the driver does not move forward till he finds sufficient passengers in his bus. Therefore rather than waiting in the bus unnecessarily, I prefer to take an e-rickshaw or Vikram that costs me a few bucks more but saves time,” said a Ladpur resident Anoothi Rastogi.
