Lockdown: ST bus service started from outside Pune city limits

Pune, June 16, 2020: Excluding Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad municipal limits, state transport (ST) bus service has been started on some major routes in the Pune district from Monday. Due to the low response of passengers, this bus service will continue on an experimental basis through 50 buses for the next week. After that, according to the response of the passengers, a decision will be taken to increase the number of buses and routes.

The Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) bus service has been running for the past few days in areas where the number of Coronavirus patients is low. Buses are not allowed to cross the district limits. As Pune city is in the red zone, initially buses were started in rural areas only. However, the service was suspended for a few days due to the spread of infection in rural areas also.

Now this service has started again in the rural areas from Monday (June 15). Currently, 50 buses have been allowed to ply on certain routes. The service will be mainly for industrial areas as well as important places in the district. There is also a large number of people coming to Pune for government and private jobs. Therefore, buses have been made available to Hadapsar and Wagholi outside the Pune city limits as they are not allowed to enter the city.

On Monday, every bus received little response throughout the day. Therefore, the service will continue on an experimental basis for the next week. The decision to increase or decrease the route will be based on the response of passengers.

The MSRTC has taken several precautionary measures like providing sanitizer in every bus, only 20 passengers allowed to enter the bus. They have to wear a mask and maintain social distancing.

The buses are currently running on following routes:
– Hadapsar to Baramati
– Wagholi to Shirur
– Chakan to Alephata
– Indapur to Baramati
– Saswad to Kapurhol
– Rajgurunagar to Bhimashankar