More and more techies hopping on

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The recent spate of petrol price hikes has brought about a change in the lives of techies. Now, more and more techies are opting for the public transport system.Volvo services to Technopark during office hours are a hit. Recently, following the demand from techies, the KSRTC has included Technopark in its Volvo service to Attingal.Interestingly, it is not the petrol price alone, but also parking woes that are a reason for the techies to choose public transport. Unfortunately, less number of techies are now opting for the carpooling facility, which was once a trend among them.Santhosh, operating officer at Alokin Software Pvt Limited, had sent a request to Transport Minister V S Sivakumar to allot a Volvo service from Technopark to Attingal. “The Minister considered our demand. The Volvo service was extended to Technopark from the first week of this month. Through mails and messages, we have been asking techies to use the service since it was allotted on our repeated demands,” said Santhosh.The Volvo services to Technopark are crowded compared to services in other routes, confirmed KSRTC officials. But techies feel that maintaining proper timing and more services during office hours would make public transport a bigger hit among them. Already, many techies have switched to company buses and cabs.Meanwhile, only a few are opting for the carpooling (sharing the car) service. Carpooling was a hit among the techies when it was launched a couple of years ago. Technopark has a number of websites where techies can find people who are ready to share their car to similar destinations.In addition to the exclusive carpooling website www.parkcarpool.in run by G-Tech, many other community-based websites such as mytechnopark.com and tpbazaar.com too have details of the carpooling facility.However, other than some techies depending on the facility during weekends, carpooling is not very active these days. “Not many are using the carpooling facility. Some use the facility during weekends to travel to their native place. But daily services are not active,” said Renjith, a techie.