Hyderabad, April 24: The occupancy rate in the AP State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) buses may have gone down, but that has not deterred officials from going ahead with the idea of providing LCD television sets in every bus.
From next month, all buses will have LCD TVs in a phased manner.
Officials told Expresso that the arrangement will begin first with long distance travel buses and later expanded to city services and without any financial burden on the corporation.
“There are 20,000 buses in the State and all of them will have the facility,” an official said.
The company that arranges the LCDs will bear the cost and will be allowed to air advertisements.
The contractor is also expected to pay rent to the APSRTC. In long distance buses movies will be played. “But in city buses only commercials and movie trailers will be showed. This facility will be made available in Hyderabad from August,” sources said. Interestingly, the same proposal earlier failed to work as the contractor backtracked citing it was not financially viable. The RTC reportedly forfeited the company’s deposit.
The RTC invited service providers by prescribing certain criteria and the work was allotted without any bidding.
Meanwhile, the RTC is in the process of procuring mobile phones for each conductor working in rural areas so that movement of the buses could be tracked and waiting time of the passengers reduced.
–Agencies