LAHORE, March 12: The city district government will discuss measures for attracting transporters to its new bus stand on Bund Road, which has proved a failure despite its ideal location, vast area, good facilities and low service charges, at a meeting here next week.
The bus stand has miserably failed to compete with around a dozen private rivals on Bund Road during the past three months, and the number of buses operating from the stand has decreased instead of increasing. The stand has a capacity for arrival and departure of 600 buses daily, but presently only an average 50 buses are being operated from it against around 85 during January.
The bus stand developed at a cost of Rs20 million over an area of 26 kanals has failed to attract the transporters mainly because the city district government adopted a bureaucratic approach for its operation, overlooking the fact that the transporters had the option of operating their buses from a number of private bus stands functioning in the area.
Instead of marketing the project in a purely commercial way, the CDGL officials invited applications for pre-qualification for operation of buses from the transporters ready to operate a minimum 10 buses daily, and pay an amount equal to at least three ‘single fares’ per trip in the form of service charges. The permission for operating buses was to be given to the highest bidders from amongst those pre-qualified.
The plan of allowing operation of buses through bidding after pre-qualification of transporters needed to be reviewed as only 27 transporters expressed interest in operation of an average 300 buses from the bus stand daily against the much larger number expected by the CDGL officials.
The officials then decided to allow operation of buses on first-come-first-served basis, against a service charge of a single fare per trip, for the first month, against upto 10 single fares being charged at the private stands, and to revise it upwards, later, when a large number of buses started operating from the stand.
The CDGL stand having a capacity for arrival and departure of 22 buses at a time, besides a restaurant for 300 persons, wears a deserted look despite being the largest in the area and having an advantage of being located first when approached from the Chowk Yateem Khana side, the route used by most of the passengers intending to travel to various destinations.
Concerned quarters are of the view that the stand has failed to attract transporters despite having many advantages because the project had been handled in a bureaucratic manner rather than the commercial.
They point out that whereas signboards giving details of routes have been installed at all the private stands, the CDG has not even bothered to install a board mentioning that the place is a bus stand.
Moreover, while the private stands have opened their booking offices in different parts of the city and offer the facility of booking seats on telephone, the CDG stand has no phone connection till date.