Student-designed website 'Yaathraakoottu' helps decode bus routes in Thiruvananthapuram

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: For commuters in the state capital, the very sight of those compact red-and-white electric buses of KSRTC, that easily negotiate busy city roads and help them reach their destinations on time, brings immense relief. Regular passengers may easily recollect the route number and the corresponding colour codes assigned to them. However, visitors and tourists to the city are often left clueless. Now, help is at hand for them. A website, fully designed by Keerthana Sara Kiran, a second year Computer Science student of LBS Institute of Technology for Women in Thiruvananthapuram, is gaining popularity among commuters as a helpful guide on KSRTC's extensive fleet of city circular service buses in the capital. Named 'Yaathraakoottu', the website presently hosted on the domain ' yaathraakoottu.vercel.app ', has exhaustive information on routes and timings of the buses in English, Malayalam and Hindi. It is a valuable source of information especially for visitors to the capital city from other states and abroad. The circular service using electric buses was introduced in the capital in August 2022 and specific route numbers and colour codes were assigned to them. In places such as East Fort and Thampanoor, we often see people from other states and tourists trying to inqure about their stops with the conductor and other commuters. The tri-lingual website is aimed mainly at them, said Keerthana, who designed the website on her own in less than a month. The website has the search option for visitors to get a list of circular buses running in the specific route. Also available is a list of the entire circular fleet and their corresponding routes numbers and colour codes. The queries can be in any of the three languages. Work is on to rectify a few glitches especially in the search with Hindi words, the student said. Keerthana's college helped her in getting the website hosted on a free platform Vercel. Transport Minister KB Ganesh Kumar, who was impressed by Keerthana's novel initiative, said the transport department would provide help in getting the website hosted on a public domain for wider reach. The Minister said he would discuss with the KSRTC chairman and managing director on how assistance could be provided for the website which is of much help to commuters, said a senior official at the Transport Minister's office.