GUNTUR: Andhra Pradesh State Transport Corporation can learn a lot from Shanghai and Hong Kong Government-owned public transport corporations and improve its performance, says Guntur RTC Regional Manager G. Jaya Rao.

Striking feature

One of the striking features is control of taxi service in the cities of Shanghai, Hong Kong and Beijing by the Government-owned corporations, he told The Hindu after his return from a tour of three Chinese cities as part of the RTC-sponsored study of urban public transport systems.

More than 95 per cent of the buses are Volvo and King Long Air-Conditioned buses that carry passengers in these cities, he says.

"Well-maintained buses run by the Sunwin Bus Corporation, Pudong Operation Bureau, Urban Transportation Bureau and Shanghai Bus Corporation at Shanghai had high-level of automation in all their operations -- right from cleaning of buses and their maintenance at three atomised garages to ticketing."

There are only two or three slabs of fare compared to 15 to 17 in AP for similar distance.

GPS fitted

There is no fare hike in China after 1996 as the Government takes care of the hike in fuel cost through subsidies. About 40,000 taxis are run by the bureaus have GPS fitted on them and a large number of them are driven by women, says Mr. Jaya Rao.

Tendering process is adopted for giving licence to run taxis. About 23 per cent of commuters take taxi service and the four companies in Shanghai cater to the remaining people by running about 20,000 AC buses.

Beijing Bus Public Transport runs 22,000 King Long buses. But their main source of income is from their venture into real-estate (construction of skyscrapers) building multi-storied parking lots. The income takes care of their company operations and provides handsome revenue , he says.

One of the immediate measures that can be implemented without any political decision in AP is washing buses with better atomisation.

With Rs.630-lakh profits earned by Guntur region it is not difficult to improve the quality of services by learning something from the Chinese experience.

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