PATIALA: Pepsu Road Transport Corporation (PRTC) has decided to resume night services on a few routes, including the Patiala-Delhi route. The department is planning to create a blueprint for all important routes in the state to boost revenues.
Night services in Punjab were stopped in the 1980s when militancy was at its peak. It has now been resumed on some routes such as Patiala-Ambala via Rajpura and Chandigarh-Patiala.
“We are planning to resume night services on other routes, including Patiala to Delhi, and a plan is being prepared. For now, a night service on some routes has been started,” said PRTC chairman Manjit Singh Narang.
PRTC tried running night services in 2015 but the shortage of buses made them stop the service. Now, two new buses have been added to the Patiala-Ambala route for the night service and the schedule has been adjusted to match the timing of trains reaching Patiala, Ambala and Rajpura railway stations.
Besides this, PRTC has rescheduled services on the Nabha-Vrindavan route via Patiala to save commuters over 24 hours. “The bus from Patiala will leave Nabha at 5.20am and reach Patiala 9.10am. Earlier, passengers had to wait a day as the temples would be closed by the time they reached at 7.30pm.
Now, they can easily visit the temples and attend religious ceremonies. They can stay the night and board the bus again at 6am from Vrindavan,” said PRTC general manager M S Sidhu.