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Alambagh bus station: Modern amenities, swanky look set to change public perception
Being touted as the country’s best bus station in terms of passenger amenities, it is ready for operations three years after the work started.
An amalgamated air-conditioned mall with an AC food plaza, automated scanners at entry points, a VIP lounge, a bank, a post office and many more such facilities resembling posh township will enhance the travel experience of passengers when the state-of-the-art Alambagh bus station is inaugurated, possibly in the next two weeks or so.
Being touted as the country’s best bus station in terms of passenger amenities, it is ready for operations three years after the work started.
Usually, the very thought of a bus station draws in one’s mind images of passengers bumping into each other, baggage scattered here and there, dingy buses parked under a shade and dirty toilets.
But it is claimed the UP State Road Transport Corporation’s (UPSRTC) first bus station built under the public-private partnership may change people’s perception of bus stations in the state.
“Once the issue with regard to user charges is settled, the modern Alambagh bus station, full of passenger amenities, will be opened for bus operations,” UPSRTC managing director P Guru Prasad said.
“The developer wants to levy user charges on passengers while we are against the proposal. The matter has been referred to the state government for arbitration,” he explained.
The state government was expected to give the green signal to the inauguration of the bus station by the month end pending the dispute, people familiar with the matter in the UPSRTC said.
Developed and designed by Shalimar Malls Pvt Ltd, a private company, at a cost of over ₹200 crore, the Alambagh bus station is spread over 26,500 sqmt.
The new bus station was built after dismantling the earlier one as part of an agreement signed between the developer and the UPSRTC in April 2015.
The developer will own the bus station for 32 years and the lease period is expandable for the next 30 years more on the first right to call basis.
Apart from an AC mall that is under construction, the Alambagh bus station also has an AC food plaza, canteen, eating points, a concourse area, automated bus in-shedding and out-shedding boom barrier regulated entry, automated passenger information service and the like. Besides, there are 50 bus departure platforms and underground parking for idle buses.
“Our Alambagh bus station is not only the state’s first PPP bus station but perhaps the country’s best one in terms of scale of passenger amenities,” claimed a UPSRTC official.
He said the corporation was going to float bids for the construction of 21 similar bus stations in various cities. “They include two more in Lucknow (Gomti Nagar and Charbagh), one each in Kanpur, Bareilly and Aligarh, two each in Allahabad, Meerut and Ghaziabad and three in Agra. All of them will be developed on PPP,” said the official.
