No count of e-rickshaws rolling on city roads

Tribune News Service

Neeraj Bagga

Amritsar, June 7

Just like the diesel-run autos, the exact number of e-rickshaws being plied on city roads is not known.

Of late, the Regional Transport Office (RTO) has started the registration of e-rickshaws. As per the RTO record, 1,485 e-rickshaws, 5,831 passenger three-wheelers and 1,819 goods carrying three-wheeler are registered.

It was only a few years ago that the registration of e-rickshaws commenced. Earlier, they were being run without registering on city roads. A senior citizen, NS Gabarhia, said it was a belated but welcome decision of the government to fix accountability. Earlier, it was extremely tough to pinpoint the erring e-rickshaw driver following an accident.

Despite government intervention to replace diesel-run autos with e-rickshaws under the Rejuvenation of Auto-rickshaws in Amritsar through Holistic Intervention (RAAHI), a large number of diesel autos is noticed on city roads.

RAAHI, a project under the Amritsar Smart City Ltd, intended to improve mass public transport system besides reducing pollution in the city, has met with considerable success but a lot more needs to be done.

Diesel autos continue to create noise and air pollution besides traffic problems on busy roads. Noiseless and physically comparatively smaller electric rickshaws have been hailed as a conducive alternative.

RTO Arashdeep Singh Lobana said to reduce pollution in the city, registration of diesel autos has already been stopped. After the directions of the government, registration of e-rickshaws was started only sometime back. He accepted that a good number of e-rickshaws without a registration number were being plied on city roads but added that they would not be there for a longer duration. The life of e-rickshaws with the previous technology was less than five years but with the improvement in technology, now e-rickshaws were available with a much longer period of viability, he said.