Part-1: Average Fleet Size & Vehicle Productivity of SRTUs decreases over years﻿
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
October 23, 2019
The strike of the
employee unions of the Telangana State Road Transport Corporation has put the
spotlight on the performance of SRTUs. Here is a 3-part series that looks at
the various aspects of SRTUs. In the first part, we look at the physical
performance of the SRTUs.
About 48,000 employees of Telangana State
Road Transport Corporation began an indefinite strike on 05October 2019 demanding a higher pay, merger with government, job security toemployees among other things. Incidents of suicides and suicideattempts by those protesting have also been reported in the state. As theprotest by TSRTC employee unions in Telangana intensifies, in a three-partseries, we analyse the performance of the State Road Transport Undertakings (SRTUs)in India. The first part looks into the physical performance such as fleetsize, vehicle productivity etc. over the years. In the second part, we look atthe staff related statistics and accidents and the last part will look into thepecuniary aspects of SRTUs.
There
were 54 SRTUs in India as per the SRTU performance report of 2015-16
The Ministry of Road Transport &Highways (MoRTH) publishes reports of SRTUs  for every financial year. The last such reportis available only for the financial year 2015-16. Every year, the number ofSRTUs which submit their report to the ministry is different. What has beenobserved is that the number of SRTUs that have submitted the report hasincreased gradually from 34 in 2009-10 to 47 in 2015-16. The data from thelatest 2015-16 report indicates that altogether there were a total of 54 SRTUsin 2015-16 of which only 47 had submitted their reports. These 47 SRTUstogether had 1.42 lakh buses. Though the number of States/UTs in India is only36, the number of SRTUs is more than 50 because some states have multipleSRTUs. Tamil Nadu has 7 SRTUs followed by Maharashtra which has 6 and Karnatakawhich has 4.
Even though the numbers suggest thatthe total number of buses has increased over the years, it should be kept inmind that the number of SRTUs that have submitted data has also increased duringthis period. In order to make the numbers comparable, the arithmetic averagenumber of buses under each SRTU has been calculated and demonstrated in thefollowing chart. From this, it is clear that the average fleet size per SRTUhas actually decreased over the years.
Maharashtra
SRTC has the largest number of buses followed by Andhra Pradesh SRTC and
Telangana SRTC
The fleet size owned by various SRTUshows a decreasing trend since 2012-13. On an average, in 2015-16, each SRTUowns only 3039 buses compared to an average of 3,599 buses per SRTU in 2010-11.According to the 2015-16 report, Maharashtra SRTC had the largest fleet sizewith 18,514 buses, followed by Andhra Pradesh with 12,012 buses. Telangana SRTChad a fleet size of 10,391 buses- third highest in the country, which accountsfor a 7.3% share of the total fleet size of the 47 SRTUs in 2015-16. Before theformation of Telangana state, United Andhra Pradesh SRTC had the largest fleetsize followed by Maharashtra SRTC. However, in terms of states, Maharashtra hadthe highest fleet size if all the 6 SRTUs are taken into consideration.  SRTUs in north eastern states- Sikkim NT,Arunachal Pradesh ST, Meghalaya STC, Mizoram ST and Tripura RTC have the lowestfleet size and had a combined share of just 0.3% of total fleet size reportedin 2015-16. This could be because of the lower population in these states andthe difficult terrain.
A
little over 90% of the total number of buses owned by SRTUs are operational
Despite the SRTUs owning more than 1.4lakh buses in 2015-16, only 1.29 lakh buses were operating. In other words, only90.4% of the fleet size was operational & plying on the roads. Fleetutilisation is calculated as the percentage of operational buses over fleetsize. Fleet utilisation had dropped from 92.4% in 2009-10 to 89.5% in 2013-14.In 2015-16, fleet utilisation was 90.4%, less than the same in preceding year,90.9% in 2014-15. Telangana SRTC had a fleet utilisation of 99.88% in 2015-16.The average age of buses in Telangana as of 2015-16 was 7.12 years. A total of 17.21%of the buses of Telangana SRTC operational in 2015-16 were over aged vehicles.
Vehicle
productivity of Telangana SRTC has been better than the national average
despite witnessing a decline in 2015-16
Fleet utilisation is a parameter whichgives an idea of quality of the vehicles and their maintenance. The averagenumber of revenue earning kilometres traversed by each bus per day isdetermined in order to ascertain the productivity of vehicle. Vehicleproductivity across the country has reduced substantially over the years. From323.3 km per bus per day in 2009-10, the productivity decreased to 305.59 kmper bus per day in 2015-16. While Maharashtra SRTC had recorded the maximumrevenue earning kilometres with over 21,066 lakh kilometres (because of thelarger fleet size), Telangana SRTC recorded 12,381.39 lakh revenue earningkilometres in 2015-16. Vehicle productivity of Telangana SRTC stood at 325.56kilometres per bus per day in 2015-16, better than the national average.However, this is less than the 330.22 km per bus per day recorded in TelanganaSRTC in 2014-15.
Telangana
SRTC reported the largest number of passengers carried in 2015-16
Along with the Indian Railways, SRTUsare the backbone of public transport in the country. A large chunk of the populationdepends on public transport since it is cost effective and convenient inaddition to reducing carbon footprint.
The year 2011-12 witnessed the highestvehicle productivity with 329.1 km per bus per day across SRTUs in India, inthe 7-year period between 2009-10 & 2015-16. The largest number ofpassengers in buses under SRTUs was also recorded in the same year.
During the 7-year period between2009-10 and 2015-16, more than 2910 crore passengers travelled in the SRTUs in2011-12, marking the highest number of passengers. In 2015-16, close to 2490crore passengers have availed the services of SRTUs. In other words, an averageof 6.82 crore passengers per day availed the services of SRTUs across the countryin 2015-16.  Telangana SRTC alone carriedmore than 329 crore passengers in 2015-16 (an average of 90 lakh a day), thelargest number of passengers for a SRTU in that year.
Occupancy ratio is measured aspercentage of passenger kilometres performed to passenger kilometres offered.This can also be inferred as the percentage of seats occupied against the seatsavailable. Occupancy ratio over the years has varied between 67.9% to 72.2%. In2015-16, the occupancy ratio was 69.7%. Telangana SRTC’s occupancy ratioincreased from 69% in 2014-15 to 70.21% in 2015-16.
In the subsequent stories, we will look at the staff strength of each SRTU, accidents amount other things.
Featured Image:State Road Transport Undertakings