By Our Reporter
Shillong: The Shillong Supplementary Public Transport Service (SSPTS) launched 60 more maxi taxis to reach the 100 car mark on Saturday. Flagged off by Urban Affairs Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh at a function held at the State Central Library premises here, the red maxi taxis will operate in localities and routes not frequented by the SPTS buses.
The newly-launched vehicles will operate in areas like Upper Shillong, Lummawbah, Mawklot, Mawlynei, Mawlai and Malki besides others. A total of 101 maxi taxis have now been procured by the State Government of which 40 were already functional.
It may be recalled that out of the 40, 25 vehicles were flagged off in January this year while the remaining 15 hit the roads on the first week of February. Initially seven routes were covered by the maxi taxis.
The maxi taxis were sanctioned for Meghalaya under the 13th Finance Commission. The Municipal Affairs department had been entrusted to run the maxi taxis but the service was outsourced to Synroplang self-help groups (SHGs) on a 50:50 revenue sharing under Public-private-partnership (PPP) mode.
As of today, the SSPTS is catering to about 12,900 commuters per day and the operation will soon expand the coverage to 15,000 travellers each day, an official of the Urban Affairs department said.
“The fares are fixed as Rs 5 to Rs 10 depending on the distance and around 10 lakh people have utilised the services so far”, he added.
The official also informed that the revenue generation of the SSPTS has been encouraging with a healthy monthly net collection so far.
For the month of January, the revenue earned was Rs 17,380 and there was a sizeable rise in the revenue from February with a total collection of Rs 3,76,480 followed by Rs 8,37,832 in March. The revenue for April was Rs 3,40,000, while it was Rs 4,20,188 and Rs 6,19,923 for May and June respectively.
Recently, the Urban Affairs Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh had stated that to further improve the public transport system in the city and its suburbs, apart from the 60 maxi taxis which were launched on Saturday, 50 more buses will be added to the Shillong Public Transport System (SPTS) under the JNNURM) later in the year.