The public continues to be harassed with the transport system and that includes overcrowded buses, irregular services, and badly maintained bus shelters. If these were not enough, passengers also have to put up with the bad attitude of some of the private bus operators who ply the same route.

Quarrels like these result in rash driving that put the passengers’ life at risk. “I take a private bus from my home to work everyday. I take bus number seven from Puliakulam to Gandhi Park. Yesterday, an express bus too operated on this route. At first a verbal war broke out between the two drivers and the conductors. But, the express bus overtook the private bus and picked up more passengers. This angered the private bus driver who began to drive in a rash manner in order to overtake the express bus. In the process, he broke signals too. He began to drive normally only after he was comfortably ahead of the public transport bus,” Hemlatha Karthik, a resident of Puliakulam who works as a sales person, says

Arguments between the crews of public and private buses have become very common. Very often they blame each other for operating at the same time. This results in either of the two deliberately skipping some bus stops and violating traffic rules.

However, this is just one of the aspects that public transport users have to put up with. Bus shelters too continue to worry passengers. We did a random check on bus shelters in Coimbatore and found a majority of them are badly maintained. Passengers agree with us.

Senior citizens A.R. Kalimuthu and his wife were returning from the hospital. The couple, originally from Tirupur, visited the Aravind Eye Hospital early this morning. They had to meet a relative in the city. On reaching the bus shelter they realized that the seats are too high and they were unable to sit on them. This is also the case with the bus shelter close to the G. Kuppuswamy Naidu Memorial Hospital (GKMN), before the Town bus stand stopping. There are two bus shelters next to each other. In one of the bus stops, a slope platform leads the passengers to the high seats, making them wonder if they were sitting on a barber’s chair.

“A few busses in the city are senior citizen friendly. Tickets in the air buses are twice as expensive as normal ones. But, these buses have a low entrance, and cannot be driven as fast as the regular buses. This makes me prefer the air buses. But, it will be of tremendous help to the passengers if the bus shelters in the bus stops improve,” Kamala Selvii R., a retired Government employee, shares.

Seconding her is V. Ganesh, an engineering student, who says, “We are not asking for additional facilities at the bus shelters. We are just requesting officials to keep them neat and tidy so that passengers can comfortably wait for the bus at such shelter.”

It is sad that a few bus stands have doubled up as shelters for the homeless. The bus shelter that is located outside the St. Antony’s Church has become a permanent resting place for a homeless couple. Pushcart vendors in this vicinity share with us that the couple has been living at the bus shelter for more than a year now. An old woman, who has been disowned by her family, has made the bus stop on the Lawley Road her home.

We visited the Town Bus Stand in Gandhipuram, but the officials were unavailable for comments.