Taking a cue from the Railways, the state government has decided to extend the ticket booking period for long distance buses to 60 days from the existing 30.
This will help cope with the increasing demand after the introduction of e-ticketing and mobile phone booking facility.
“The number of passengers travelling with reservation tickets has considerably increased in recent months after the e-ticketing facility was introduced last November.
Subsequently the demand for reservation tickets has also shot up. This has forced us to consider implementing the scheme,” sources in the Transport department told this newspaper on Tuesday.
Reservation ticket booking has gone up by over 20 per cent. “On an average 50,000 to 60,000 passengers travel by SETC buses daily.
Of them 10,000 travel with reservation tickets,” said another official adding that of the 10,000 tickets, 2,500 are being booked through the e-ticketing facility, while the remaining are booked at online reservation counters across the state and 50 through the mobile phone booking facility.
“If all goes well it will be introduced before Deepavali. With regards to the mobile phone booking scheme, people feel that it’s unreliable as the cell phone network coverage in several parts of the state is still inadequate, barring Chennai,” added the source.
SETC has also decided to increase the number of reservation booking counters to 300. “We have recently opened 17 online reservation ticket counters across the state,” added an official.