Online bus ticketing platform on Friday announced the launch of ‘vaccinated bus’ service across 600 major routes in the country that guarantees passengers to travel with vaccinated co-passengers and crew.
Booking a ticket on this service requires travellers to have received at least the first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine and they must submit proof of the same at the time of boarding, redBus said in a statement.
‘Vaccinated bus’ is being introduced in collaboration with private partner bus operators that have a customer rating of more than four stars out of five on the platform.
In order to ensure proper execution of this new system, boarding for passengers who book their tickets on vaccinated buses will only be allowed once they produce their ID proof and vaccination certificate at the time of boarding. The travellers will also be informed of these requirements before the journey through e-mail and SMS. The partner bus operator staff will physically verify the vaccination certificates/ ID proofs for all adult passengers before boarding, with the exception of passengers aged below 18. Passengers who fail to provide the necessary proof will be denied boarding.
redBus Chief Executive Officer Prakash Sangam said, “According to a survey that we recently undertook with our customers, 89 per cent of the respondents said that they prefer to travel in a bus which had all the bus staff and co-passengers vaccinated with at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.”
Sangam added that it is, therefore, evident that a ‘vaccinated bus’ rids passengers of their anxiety to a large extent and restores their confidence to undertake travel. “At the moment, these services are spread across 600 routes in the country and we will look at further scaling this initiative based on the response to it.”
Some of the top routes across the country where vaccinated buses are currently operational are listed below:
- Delhi – Chandigarh – Delhi
- Hyderabad – Tirupati – Hyderabad
- Ahmedabad – Udaipur – Ahmedabad
- Bangalore – Coimbatore – Bangalore
- Delhi – Lucknow – Delhi
(Disclaimer: Additional background information has been added to this PTI copy for context)
