Patiala: The Punjab Roadways Transport Corporation (PRTC) has added 250 new buses in April to improve service across Punjab, thus recovering 33,000 kilometres of the 44,500 kilometres it earlier missed daily because of a severe shortage of buses, officials said in Patiala.
Chief minister Bhagwant Singh Mann had flagged off 250 new buses on April 6, taking the PRTC fleet to a sanctioned strength of 1,351 buses. However, as 100 buses are yet to hit the roads, the operational fleet stands at 1,251 buses.
However, the increase in daily revenue is only around Rs 1 lakh so far. Officials expect the revenue to jump after end of wheat harvesting season, when the remaining 100 of the 250 buses becomes operational. PRTC chairman Harpal Juneja said, "Our next target is to cover the remaining missing routes of PRTC," adding that the remaining deficit would be addressed by operating on previously inactive routes. One focus of the expansion was routes where PRTC held a near-monopoly but could not adequately serve commuters due to insufficient buses. On the Ludhiana–Malerkotla–Patiala route, a 100-kilometre corridor typically covered in approximately three hours, PRTC deployed 20 new buses, fulfilling 20 allocated time slots on the route. At the Malerkotla - Patiala route having 106 time slots, the PRTC earlier missed 37 time slots out of total 98 allocated to it, while the remaining eight slots were allocated to Punjab roadways buses. "Now all missing 37 time slots have been recovered by PRTC after new buses were added. It is a big relief for commuters", said Juneja.
Other monopoly routes that received new buses included Patiala–Patran, Patiala–Pehowa, Patiala–Samana, Patiala–Cheeka, Patiala–Nabha, Patiala–Rajpura, and Patiala–Ambala Cantonment, among others.
"It has proven a big relief for commuters, including students, especially during the morning and evening hours," a senior PRTC official said. However, Malerkotla resident Kanwardeep Singh said, "Its just a partial relief. There is no single AC bus on this route. This route sees large number of daily commuters, especially students travelling to and from Punjabi University Patiala. The buses are overcrowded, leaving female passengers at harassment risk."
As part of the reorganisation, new buses were deployed on major intercity corridors including Patiala–Jalandhar–Amritsar, Sangrur–Ludhiana, Bathinda–Patiala, Patiala–Mansa, and Patiala–Abohar. The older buses replaced on these routes were reassigned to shorter, local routes such as Patiala–Nabha and Patiala–Samana. PRTC's daily revenue in March stood at Rs 2.47 crore. With approximately 150 of the 250 new buses operational, daily receipts rose by Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2.48 crore. Officials expect a sharper revenue increase once the remaining 100 buses are assigned routes and timetables.
Juneja added that within the next two months, an additional 309 standard buses and 100 mini-buses owned by PRTC were set to be inducted into the fleet, which was expected to substantially close the gap in daily kilometre coverage.
