Five hundred electric buses could be added to Delhi’s public transport infrastructure with the State government considering procuring the vehicles.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had on Tuesday asked officials of the Transport Department to boost public transport, including adding electric buses to the fleet. Sources said Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot met with officials of the Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System (DIMTS), which operates the cluster bus service, to discuss the options.
Two sizes
A senior official said that 500 electric buses were one of the options being considered. Two sizes of low-floor AC electric buses were being looked at: standard, which costs ₹2.6 crore, and midi, which costs ₹1.6 crore.
Tuesday’s meeting chaired by the CM and then the Transport Minister’s meeting with DIMTS came in the wake of the AAP government being criticised over the delay in augmenting public transport. While the DTC has not bought any new buses since 2010, the AAP government too has been unsuccessful since it came to power in 2015.
The government is now in the process of buying 2,000 new buses.
