City bus service receives lukewarm response on first day of operations

On the first day of resumption of operations since the district went into a lockdown on March 24, the Gurugaman city bus service saw a lukewarm response with minimal

On the first day of resumption of operations since the district went into a lockdown on March 24, the Gurugaman city bus service saw a lukewarm response with minimal ridership on key routes, particularly those plying to and from Metro stations. While ridership numbers for the day had not been compiled until late on Thursday evening, officials in the Gurugram Metropolitan City Bus Limited(GMCBL) estimated that there were no more than 150 to 200 commuters per route throughout the day.

HT Image

On two of the six operational routes (from Basai to Huda City Centre, and from Gurugram bus stand to Sikanderpur Metro), buses were seen travelling with merely a passenger or two. While all commuters were thermal scanned to check for fever, no hand sanitiser was provided. Drivers and conductors were all seen wearing masks and some were wearing gloves. Only in one instance, on the Basai to Huda City Centre route was a conductor seen not wearing a mask when interacting with commuters.

A bus driver on the Huda City Centre to Basai route, requesting anonymity, said that internal routes had fared better on Thursday. “Earlier, the busiest routes were the ones going to the Metro stations. Huda City Centre used to get a high footfall, but not more than 10 people have boarded from there today,” he said. On other routes, such as Gurugram bus stand to Sohna, and Rajesh Pilot Chowk to Gurugram railway station, a Hindustan Times team observed slightly greater number of passengers — up to 10 travelling in a single vehicle.

Vanita Akhaury, spokesperson, GMCBL, said, “We are only operating with one fourth of our fleet right now, around 68 buses. The number of buses, routes and the frequency of buses will be revised next week based on public response and feedback.”

While Akhaury did not speculate about the day’s ridership numbers, a senior administration official in the GMCBL, said, “There were six routes operational today which, by afternoon, had serviced about 100 to 150 commuters each. Ridership would not have been very high in the evening, so the overall ridership would be quite low. We will have to wait till tomorrow (Friday) to see how we fared.”