Amritsar city bus service stalls

Launched in 2014, the Amritsar city bus service project has stalled after incurring heavy losses. Put in place to streamline the chaotic city traffic, and to provide an affordable public transport system to the people of the city, the bus service, operated by Anantha Padmanabha Transit Private Limited (APTPL) has cited a reason of incurring a loss of Rupees-two crore over the last three years of operation. Non sustainable any longer, the loss the city bus service has suffered, is attributed to the government’s failure to curb a large population of illegal auto rickshaws plying in the city. Experts claim that the fate of Bus Rapid Transport System (BRTS) will be the same if the situation was not dealt with promptly. What is surprising is that APTPL is successfully operating 460 and 160 buses at Raipur and Bhopal sans the menace of illegal auto rickshaws. Claiming that at a similar service in Ludhiana and Jalandhar shut down due to the same reason earlier, experts have called for efforts to revive the stalled city bus service, and to ensure that the BRTS project does not stall either.