Source Calcutta State Transport buys buses, but fails to run them by Arnab Mallick May 31, 2005 http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage.php?storyflag=y&leftnm=lmnu2&leftindx=2&am p;lselect=1&chklogin=N&autono=190247

Calcutta State Transport Corporation (CSTC), like many of the other state transport undertakings in West Bengal, has been reporting worsening operational parameters every passing year, with no sign of any improvement.  

However, this did not prevent CSTC, owned by the cash-strapped government of West Bengal (GoWB), from purchasing a significant number of buses during financial year 2004-05.  

CSTC purchased 180 buses in that year, taking the number of serviceable buses owned by it to 1,108, according to the economic review published by the government of West Bengal.  

Interestingly, a similar course - buying buses while carrying fewer passengers - was followed by the loss-making North Bengal State Transport Corporation (NBSTC).  

CSTC has been serving the public less and less with every passing year.  

Despite of increasing population pressure on the state transport system, CSTC could manage to serve 22.11 crore passengers during 2002-03 which was lower than previous year's figure of 23.27 crore.  

Despite the purchase of new buses, CSTC managed to ply only 69.13 per cent of its owned buses on the roads during 2004-05, lower than the previous year's figure of 70.55 per cent, the government report pointed out.  

The average vehicle productivity showed a further decline coming down to 155 kilometre (km) per day per bus during 2004-05 as compared to the 158 km per day per bus, calculated on the average fleet held.  

However, CSTC reported some improvements in its internal housekeeping parameters.  

There was an increase of 2 per cent point in the load factor which touched 55 per cent in 2004-05 compared to 53.01 per cent of 2003-04.  

In the human resource segment, CSTC reported lower staff employed per bus at 7.15 in 2004-05 as compared to 7.39 in 2003-04, revealed the review.  

At the same time, staff productivity marginally improved to 21.67 km per worker per day during the last year against 21.36 km per worker per day, the corresponding figure for the previous year.  

The overall impact of this was that CSTC reduced its loss by around 15 per cent in 2002-03 to Rs 78.81 crore as compared to Rs 93.13 crore in 2001-02, according to recent data published by the Bureau of Applied Economics and Statistics, GoWB.  

This was primarily due to the 10 per cent decline in their expenditure during the same period at around Rs 138.64 crore in 2002-03 as compared to Rs 154.19 crore in the previous year.