40 more electric buses in Chandigarh by July

Tribune News Service

Dushyant Singh Pundir

Chandigarh, February 9

With an aim to reduce vehicular pollution in the city, the Chandigarh Transport Undertaking (CTU) will add 40 more buses to its fleet of electric buses by the mid of this year.

The UT Transport Department has finalised a company to run the environment-friendly buses on the basis of the kilometre scheme.

Pradhuman Singh, Director, Transport Department, said Volvo Eicher was awarded the contract to run the buses at the rate of Rs44.99 per km, which was cheaper by Rs15 per kilometre in comparison to the work allotted earlier for the 40 buses in the first phase. Earlier, the contract to run 40 electric buses was allotted to Ashok Leyland at the rate of Rs60 per kilometre. He said the company would deliver all buses by June or July this year.

The procurement of the buses will give a major boost to the plan of the UT Administration to replace the entire fleet of 358 diesel buses of the CTU, running on local or suburban routes, with electric ones by 2027-28.

In September 2020, the Centre had sanctioned 80 electric buses for the UT under Phase II of the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles in India (FAME India) Scheme. In the first phase, the UT had received 40 electric buses before the end of December last year. Later, bids were invited for the procurement of 40 more electric buses in the second phase.

On August 11 last year, the then UT Administrator, VP Singh Badnore, had flagged off the first electric bus to run on a trial basis for a month.

After a long wait, city residents were able to travel in the non-polluting electric buses after UT Administrator Banwarilal Purohit flagged off 11 electric buses for commercial operations on November 14. The entire fleet of 40 electric buses was put on commercial operations by the end of December.

After being charged, the bus will be able to cover a distance of nearly 130 km and it will take nearly two to two and a half hours to fully charge the bus. Each bus has a seating capacity of 36 and a maximum of 54 persons will be able to travel at a time, and it will run 200-300 km in a day.

A charging station has been set up at Depot No. 3 in Sector 25. The buses have also been fitted with the fire detection and alarm system.

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