Gurugram gets women-only bus

Gurugram: The city bus service in Gurugram known as Gurugraman on Thursday started a special bus that will only carry women passengers. The bus 116-A will ply from HUDA city center to Gurugram railway station. The bus route was selected by the officials after a survey found that the present route had maximum traffic of women passengers.

"This is for the first time we are starting this initiative. We hope that this project will become successful and will encourage us to also replicate this form of the model on the other routes," said a senior official from Gurugraman.

Currently, Gurugram city bus service is running 129 buses on 12 routes in a bid to improve the public transport network in the city.

Taking cognisance of the increased vehicular pollution the Gurugram administration will now invest in electric vehicles. To begin with, an order of twelve vehicles have already been tendered by Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) officials who will then phase out their vehicles that are mostly operated on Diesel.

Public transportation is still proving to be unsatisfactory and unsafe for women. Despite steps taken to improve the condition, the means are still limited in areas like MG Road, Golf Course road. The condition, however, becomes worse in far-flung areas of the city, especially for the women.

To ensure comfortable travel for women travellers, the concept of Pink autos was re-introduced in 2014. However, three years after, the pink autos seem to find no takers. Citing lack of profitability, most of the auto drivers have decided to not drive these autos which are resulting in the reduction of its fleet in the city. Initially, planned to be present in all major metro stations of the city, today it is can only be found at MG road and HUDA city center metro stations.