Busworld India in its webinar on ‘Resuming bus manufacturing and operations during and after lockdown” discussed key measurement which would be helpful for transporters, passengers as well as the government.
– Key issues for a discussion were lack of demand, social distancing, the safety of passengers, financial crisis and way forward.
– C.R.C. Mohanty, Environment Programme Coordinator, UNCRD emphasised on the connectivity and accessibility of transport to the public. “Connectivity is important for labourers and farmers, public transport is heavily affected by zero revenue. In this economic slowdown, livelihood is affected and we have to resume public transport as early as possible” said C.R.C. Mohanty.
– Shivayogi C. Kalasad IAS, MD, KSRTC presented mobility challenges for KSRTC in a pandemic, where he discussed KSRTC’s operational preparedness, policies to protect its employees, promoting passenger safety and movement of labourers by KSRTC.
– Suresh Chettiar. Vice President, Volvo Bus Corporation & Business Head, Volvo Buses – South Asia in his presentation explained how buses can lead the way to secure confident restart by developing and implementing appropriate safety protocols.Suresh Chettiar said ” Public Transport can deliver an assurance of safe and travel clearly over a choice of personal vehicles. The industry must raise the bar to inspire confidence”.
– Nupur Gupta, Senior Transport Specialist with the World Bank pointed out how urban bus sector is in distress and measures like enabling policy environment, LT planning and funding, ITS for efficiency and user response and performance-based service delivery could help to revive. Nupur Gupta divided her observations into three phases lockdown, recovery and new normal. She asked for a national bus rejuvenation scheme for public buses moving towards sustainability.
-Dr Yoga Adiwinarto from Transjakarta Indonesia informed how Transjakarta ridership drops to only per cent throughout pandemic because of safety measurement by company. He explained how strategies were made to cope up with Covid-19 crisis and it was classified into the immediate, mid-term and long term.
-Navsharan Singh Garcha, State Chairman BOCI Chattisgarh talked about the road forward post-pandemic and how government can look into demands by BOCI and implement it for stability in business. He said,” Government hasn’t been responsive to our demands on relief in taxation, we need six months of period to begin operation normally, Insurance companies and the Government should look into the risk of standing buses are higher than running buses so they should considerate”.
The webinar was moderated by Kulwant Singh, Advisor atBusworld Academy and in the end, he concluded how social distancing is a key factor to resume operations post lockdown and new measurements will come into place to prevent Covid19 spread.
