Students can use old bus passes: Minister

Transport authorities have already issued applications for the free passes to the schools and have entrusted the responsibility of filling and returning the forms to the school managements. Since the validity of passes issued last year expires with the end of 2015-16 academic year, students are not allowed to travel for free in the government buses after the schools reopened on June 1. 

In this backdrop, the Transport Minister, at a high level meeting held at the Secretariat, ordered the officials to take this step in facilitating the students to use their old passes. Apart from this, the meeting focused on the measures to be taken to improve the overall efficiency of the state transport corporations. 

“Transport corporation officials should ensure that all the buses ply as per the time table without any lag,” he said and pointed out that all the buses should be allowed to operate only after regular cleaning and maintenance. 

On the operation of buses in unfeasible routes, the Minister said that proper planning should be done to reschedule the routes and timings of the buses while at the same time ensuring that commuters   are not affected. 

With the aim of adding more new buses to the existing fleets, Vijayabhaskar ordered the officials to take steps immediately to carry out bus bodybuilding works on approved chassis. Moreover, the officials were also asked to expedite the works on new TNSTC workshops so that the maintenance works are carried out smoothly despite the increase in number of buses. 

Transport corporations have also been asked to tap and implement new revenue generation means like PPP, advertisements and parcel services. It may be noted that the transport department introduced parcel service in 2012 and expanded the service gradually to other transport corporations in the state.