Bus Tickets in India

India is vast country. It has a huge network of transportation system along the length and breadth of the country. Whether it is railways, air transport or the daily commuters’ bus transport, every Indian is moving every second from one place to another.

Buses take up over 90% of public transport in Indian cities, and serve as a cheap and convenient mode of transport for all classes of society. Services are mostly run by state government owned transport corporations. However, after the economic liberalization, many state transport corporations have introduced various facilities like low-floor buses for the disabled and air-conditioned buses to attract private car owners to help decongest roads. Bus tickets in India are usually affordable and cheap and the most important of them all, justified. I have travelled a lot by DTC buses in my school time and I remember a bus ticket of Rs. 10 took me 25 kilometers away to my coaching center. That was quite cheap and economical. Unlike train tickets that are different for different class of bogies, the bus tickets are approximately the same for the state run transport corporations or private corporations, for example the DTC buses and the blue line buses. After the introduction of more advanced BRTs (Bus Rapid Transit), there has been a rise in the bus tickets, but the quality of service has envisaged an improvement as well, so the commuters are ready to shell out one or two bucks more for the quality service. The bus tickets for air-conditioned buses are higher. In the metropolitan like Delhi, where travelling is a norm and where there is so much need for public transport, the network of buses is really huge. A gamut number of bus terminals, at every corner of the city ensure that the service is adequate.

Bus tickets in India and their price depend upon few factors. If the price of petrol rises, the hike is triggered in bus ticket prices. Some bus drivers often charge undue high bus ticket prices, but then in the areas where they operate they are indispensable so the public has to surrender to their decisions.

There is a need to monitor the bus ticket prices in India. Some of these institutions are within the public sector – especially the planning and regulatory bodies. Organizations providing transport services could be in either the private or the public sector. And it has also been observed that people do not buy bus tickets and indulge into fraudulent activities by availing service without paying. And some conductors also do not provide appropriate bus tickets to the commuters. Also they are not the legal bus tickets; they are just counterfeit and not issued by the governing authority. There must be a common authority that monitors the bus tickets printing and their distribution for all buses running under private or public umbrella. In this way there will be uniformity in the prices and the public would not hold any grudge.

Sarika Khanna is travel industry specialist & freelance writer for Traveltoogle. Traveltoogle is one stop provider of cheap bus tickets online to any destination of India. So with all this luxury of convenience book bus tickets online for you at the click of a mouse, where are you headed this summer?