The Delhi government will procure 1,000 mini and midi buses for the extension of public transportation services to congested, mostly residential, locations as per the instructions of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to this effect, sources claim.
Mr. Kejriwal had, last Wednesday, presided over a presentation by the Transport Department related to various issues. He had reviewed the status of future projects aimed at overhauling the Capital’s public transport infrastructure and directed the Department to ensure better connectivity for narrow and congested areas, sources said.
Route study
“The Delhi government is going to procure around 1,000 mini and midi-buses for deployment on narrow roads where standard size buses can’t operate. The Department is currently carrying out a route study for deployment of these vehicles at both urban and rural pockets,” a senior government official confirmed.
“Both the Chief Minister and the Transport Department has received representations from various quarters, including legislators from both the Opposition and the AAP, requesting the operationalisation of such buses in their constituencies which are either rural and do not have connectivity at all or are very congested and too inaccessible for the DTC’s low floor and cluster buses,” said a source.
The AAP Delhi government had, in May this year, floated tenders for procuring such vehicles and intended to roll them out “in three to four months.”
To be plied on a per-kilometre basis, the procurement of the fleet is yet to materialise.
No buses, according to a source, have been added to the low-floor fleet of the DTC since 2010 with only vehicles operated under the cluster scheme increasing. Currently, 5,600-odd buses are operated by the DTC and the Delhi Integrated Multi Modal Transit System on nearly 800 routes in the Capital.
Govt estimates
Conservative government estimates, as per an internal Transport Department survey, peg the total requirement of public buses in the Capital at 10,000. Sources, however, claim the figure has now gone up to around 15,000 to 16,000.
This, even as over 100 DTC buses were en route to being phased out after running for 7.5 lakh km by 2018, sources said. As it is, as many as an estimated 400 DTC buses remain off roads due to maintenance-related issues on a daily basis, as per government estimates.
