Thiruvananthapuram: Tourist buses in the state will have uniform colour code soon. The State Transport Authority (STA) headed by Transport Commissioner R Sreelekha ordered that the tourist buses must be painted white in colour with grey lines of width 10 cm.
The authority has strictly banned using other colours, paintings or graffiti on the body of the buses. Every bus must have the writing ‘Tourist Bus’ in place of its name. Other writings are strictly restricted. Operator’s name should be written on the back side of the bus by maintaining a height of 40 cm.
Uniform colour code was made mandatory for tourist buses in order to avoid the unhealthy competition between the operators. With the new order coming into force, buses taken for new registration and fitness test must shift to the new colour code.
STA issued the new order by dismissing the protest from tourist bus operators. With the new order, tourist buses will also have a uniform colour in white like tourist taxis.
As there was no uniform colour code, tourist bus operators used colours and paintings on the buses according to their preference. The authority decided to implement uniform colour code for buses after observing that pictures of models and film stars on buses will deviate the attention of the drivers and lead to road accidents.
STA also imposed restriction on name of tourist buses in view of the competition between fans association of buses.
