Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) has decided to do away with the lockdown norms in its seating system and has confirmed to run services with full capacity in view of the revenue losses. Since lockdown until recently, APSRTC was running buses with 50% occupancy rate in order to ensure physical distancing norms among the passengers in view of the COVID-19 situation.
Passengers would be first allowed to occupy the window seats on either side and with more passengers boarding, others seats would also be filled up till full capacity. It was decided that no passenger would be allowed to travel by standing in the bus.
Earlier, only one person was allowed to sit in a row on one side and the other seats were marked with physical distancing symbols. However, passengers with only masks would be allowed to board the bus and are advised to carry sanitisers along with them. For those who failed to get sanitisers, the stores in the RTC bus stands are also open for people to purchase them if required. Authorities said that thermal screening of all the passengers is also being done, however, according to the passengers who travelled, that is not the case.
APSRTC has removed the physical distancing norms as per the state government guidelines. The corporation also started city bus services last week in metro cities like Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam, according to local media reports.
Meanwhile, according to Deccan Chronicle, an APSRTC official was quoted as saying that Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have already been running RTC services in full capacity, so AP is also going to follow the same in order to overcome the losses and would run the bus services as per the designated capacity of the buses. APSRTC has also decided to resume all types of bus services slowly in a phased manner.
Even for buses booked through online reservation, tickets will be given up till full capacity.