Govt to buy 1,000 new buses; still shortfall of about 3,700

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 13

The government has initiated the process of buying 1,000 new buses that are likely to hit city roads in the next 9-10 months. Still the city faces a shortfall of close to 3,700 buses to cover all city routes.

The national Capital has around 865 routes for buses to ply and as per the government around 11,000 buses in total are required to cover all the areas in the city.

“The city needs 11,000 buses for all its areas to be covered. We have started the process to acquire 1,000 more. It is going to take around 9-10 months for them to land on city roads,” said Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot.

Last-mile connectivity is another aspect the government is focusing on, the Transport Minister told the Assembly during the recently held Monsoon session.

The Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) has a fleet of 3,944 buses. The Delhi Integrated Multimodal Transit System (DIMTS) also runs 1,634 buses under the cluster scheme. Together around 5,600 buses manage to cover nearly 75 per cent of the identified routes in the city.

Further, a total of 799 mini stage carriage buses move on 124 routes, going by the data available from the Transport Department.

The State Transport Authority has identified 657 routes, while the DTC has earmarked 208 more for bus operations. The cluster buses run on 124 of these routes and the DTC operates on 465.

The total number of buses, including those run by the DTC, cluster ones and mini stage carriers, comes to about 6,300. The proposed purchase of 1,000 buses will take the cumulative fleet to 7,300 while 3,700 buses short of the required 11,000 figure.

The government has identified a total of 865 routes for operation of buses and the Transport Department runs buses on 714 of these routes, with many stretches having less fleet than the required number of buses.

To ensure last mile connectivity the department is considering linking the routes of RTVs, e- rickshaws and gramin sewa vehicles.