Telangana: Ticket & bus pass price hikes do little to help TSRTC

Hyderabad: The Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC) recently increased its passenger ticket and bus pass prices with an added ‘diesel cess’ to mitigate its daily losses, but even that has not helped the corporation much. The overall losses or daily revenue it generates is still far away from helping it break even said offiicials.
Even with the latest diesel cess, there has been a negligible increase in revenue.
Reeling in losses, Rs 5 Cr short in revenue The TSRTC has 9,384 corporate buses, and 2,909 hired buses in Telangana. Overall, it ferries about 42 lakh people every day from the state, and to other states. With the normal income from ticket sale and bus passes, the corporation makes about Rs 13 crore per day. However, this is an overall loss to the TSRTC as the cost of maintenance (expenditure) is Rs 18 crores.
The TSRTC withstands losses every single day, which in recent days have only increased in proportion to rising rates of of diesel. “The daily loss is about Rs 4-4.5 crores. In the month of May, we incurred an overall loss of about Rs 140 crores,” said a senior TSRTC official. In 2021-22, the RTC incurred losses of Rs 2,143 crores.
“With the diesel cess, there has been an increase in revenue of about Rs 50 lakhs,” the senior official added.
Student bus passes get dearer Of the 42 lakh daily passengers of the TSRTC, 12 lakh are students. Most of these students use the bus services via a student buss pass, for which they can apply through their educational institute.