Women constitute 64% of passengers in the ‘regular’ category of buses of the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) after the implementation of the Priyadarshini free ride scheme on June 15, up from 50% last week, senior officials said on Wednesday.
The UDF government launched the scheme on June 15, allowing women and transgender persons free ride in regular class of KSRTC buses as part of its pre-poll promise. The overhead of running the scheme is approx $Officials said Rs 800 crore would be borne by the state government annually. There are about 3,100 ‘regular’ KSRTC services in the state, out of a total of 4,500 services.
Data released by the state transport department on Wednesday showed that 725,000 women rode the “regular” class of state-run buses by purchasing tickets on June 8 before the scheme came into effect. This number was about 50% of the total number of passengers on these buses. On the first day of the scheme’s implementation, June 15, the number of female passengers rose to 963,000 and then to 1.18 million on June 16. This indicates a 14% increase in the number of female passengers within two days of the implementation of the scheme.
On June 16, of the 1.85 million passengers who took trips in KSRTC’s regular class of buses, 1.18 million were women, accounting for 64% of the passengers.
The data showed that women constitute 47% of the total passengers in all categories of KSRTC buses. While 2.55 million people rode all classes of KSRTC buses on June 16, 1.20 million were women.
“The data clearly shows that the number of women riding KSRTC buses, in its regular category, has increased after the launch of the scheme. This indicates that the number of women passengers in KSRTC will continue to rise. It shows the success of the scheme,” a statement issued by the transport department said.
