Bengaluru: Chief Minister Siddharamaiah will inaugurate Shakti, the free bus travel scheme for women tomorrow (June 11).
The Congress Government had promised to implement the ‘Shakti’ initiative facilitating free travel for women in State-owned buses ahead of polls.
The CM is scheduled to travel in the Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) bus route number 43 as part of the scheme inauguration. The bus will start its journey from the city’s Majestic area and end near the Vidhana Soudha.
Siddharamaiah will also interact with the passengers. The core team working for the party has come out with this plan to get maximum mileage and coverage to reach out to the common people.
Meanwhile, the Chief Minister has directed all District in-charge Ministers and MLAs to launch the ‘Shakti’ scheme in their jurisdiction tomorrow. He also directed them to ensure that the ‘Shakti’ scheme reaches all eligible beneficiaries.
According to Transport Department, women can apply for Shakti smart card online through sevasindhu.karnataka.gov.in from June 11. However, the Government is yet to clarify on when it will start issuing the smart card for women.
Introduce Electric buses and let all routes have women’s special buses only for Women. The running cost of electric buses will less as it runs 180km. In a full charge which takes 45 minutes to fully charge and the cost of charge is INR 200 only . And to add under the “National Clean Air Initiative” thane transport administration got funds to buy 123 electric city buses.Requesting Mr.Simha to help get these funds from Central Government under “National Clean Air Initiative” to get 150 Electric City buses for Mysuru so as to reduce air pollution moving towards a Clean and Green Mysuru.
Some may disagree with me but I think instead of providing free bus travel only to women , government could have made buses fares more affordable for both – men and women. This would have encouraged more people to use public transport. Instead of bearing the cost of free travel for women, government could have used the same money to improve the buses & depots. If services are good then people will surely use public transport and that would reduce traffic problem as well.
Most of the people never ask for free facilities. What they expect is affordable, value for money, safe, convenient and reliable services.
The cost of running electric bus for 180km on full charge is INR 200 .(INR – Indian rupee) .KeralaSRTC has introduced 50 Swift electric city buses in Thiruvananthapuram which will save 20 crore a year .Hence to attract more commuters they have a flat ticket price of INR 10 whether you travel 1Km or 10Km.Also the daily pass is INR 30 and 24 hours pass is INR 50.Such pricing of tickets and introduction of electric buses will be beneficial for citizens.