DTC buses clock bigger spike in ridership than the Delhi Metro

New Delhi: The daily bus ridership of the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) spiked by around 36% on Monday compared to a week ago when only 50% of the seating occupancy was allowed in the buses, the DTC said on Tuesday

The daily bus ridership of the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) spiked by around 36% on Monday compared to a week ago when only 50% of the seating occupancy was allowed in the buses, the DTC said on Tuesday. The jump in ridership after the latest Covid-19 relaxation was steeper than that of the Delhi Metro, which registered an increase in ridership of only about 9.3% on Monday, data analysed by HT showed.

People board a DTC bus at AIIMS in New Delhi. Representational image (Amal KS/HT PHOTO)

Buses and the Delhi Metro were operating with 50% seating capacity till Sunday. This has been increased to 100% from Monday, but no standing passengers are allowed inside buses or the Metro. So effectively a DTC bus can now carry 33 passengers (excluding the driver and conductor), while a Metro coach can carry 50 people (400 for an entire train).

DTC data showed that last Monday (July 19), its fleet of 3,760 buses carried 1,102,513 passengers. During that period, buses were allowed to ply with only 50% seating capacity. On Monday (July 26), when the restriction was lifted to allow 100% seating capacity, the ridership increased to 1,522,444. Similarly, the total earning of the DTC through tickets also increased from ₹1.01 crore to ₹1.58 crore on the days mentioned above. This means that the per bus earning last week was around ₹3,450 which increased to ₹4,611 this week after the relaxation.

“Compared to the pre-pandemic days, the average daily bus ridership, even after the relaxation, is less by around 1.6 million. Till March 2020, for example, the DTC used to carry around 3.2 million passengers every day,” said RS Minhas, deputy chief general manager (public relations), DTC.

The Delhi Metro, which also started operating with 100% seating capacity from Monday, witnessed at least 1.75 million passenger trips on day one after the relaxation, as compared to the usual 1.6 million passenger trips seen on Mondays.

The combined DTC and cluster bus fleet in Delhi currently is 6,750 - the highest in nearly a decade. It was during the 2010 Commonwealth Games that Delhi last operated around 6,000 buses. However, the city needs 11,000 buses, according to a government affidavit submitted to the high court in 2018.