AURANGABAD: The newly-introduced city bus service in Aurangabad has been receiving a good response from the citizens with the daily income shooting past Rs1.23 lakh within no time.On an average, 9,049 citizens travel in the city buses on any given day with a load factor (passenger occupancy) of 49.3% achieved per day, shows the official data.The Aurangabad Smart City Development Corporation Limited (ASCDCL) is the special purpose vehicle which has been formed for the implementation of the Smart City Mission, under which the city bus service has been started since January 23. The ASCDCL has entered into an agreement with the Maharashtra State Road Transportation Corporation (MSRTC) for the daily running of the city bus service.MSRTC divisional controller Prashant Bhusari said on Tuesday that the city bus service has received an excellent response within a small period of time. “The initial few days of launching of the public transportation is called a ‘settling-in period’, during which the income of the city bus service was around Rs50,00 per day. After the initial days, the income has more than doubled for a period of 10 days from February 1,” he said.The ASCDCL operated a fleet of around 23 buses from February 1 to February 10 and five more buses have been added to this number since Monday, taking the total number of buses to 28.“Earlier, we were running buses on 14 routes and now four new routes covering the city’s outskirts have been added since Monday. The total running of buses on a daily basis was 5,600km earlier, which has seen an increase to 6,200km now,” said Bhusari, adding that the city bus service will attract a larger number of passengers in the days to come.Notably, the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) had its own city bus service more than a decade ago, which was operated with the help of a private firm, with a fleet of nearly 70 buses. The bus service, however, gradually incurred losses and was finally shelved after becoming economically non-viable in 2010.Sharad Adwant of advocacy group Marathwada Janta Vikas Parishad said that the ASCDCL must set up proper bus-stops as soon as possible to take the revenue generation of the city bus service to greater heights.When contacted, ASCDCL authorities said that the necessary formalities for setting-up the bus-stops are being completed.As part of the MoU between the ASCDCL and the MSRTC, the latter has been providing a workforce of around 70 drivers and an equal number of conductors as well as parking facilities for the city-bus service.

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