The Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) will be replacing close to 300 buses in its fleet by the end of this month. As a first step, 59 Tata Marcopolo buses have been inducted in the last few days.
All the new buses will replace deluxe buses in the fleet. The deluxe buses would be operated as M services, a senior MTC official said. The total number of ordinary, deluxe and M services will remain the same after the induction, he added.
The Tata Marcopolo buses have an extra length of about two feet, making them seem more spacious.
Transport Secretary Atulya Misra told The Hindu that 100 new air-conditioned Volvo buses would be added by the end of the fiscal. About 40 of them will be inducted shortly, once a proposal forwarded by the MTC regarding the routes is approved.
Pointing out that only 3,000-odd buses are available for regular services everyday when the requirement is about 5,000 buses, the MTC official said that replacement would be only a stop-gap solution.
He added that increasing the area of coverage without adding to the fleet in the past few years had to be set right soon.
