CTU to add 100 electric, 60 ordinary buses to its fleet

Chandigarh, January 4

The Chandigarh Transport Undertaking (CTU) will add 160 more buses to its fleet operating on local and interstate routes. As many as 100 of these will be electric buses and ply on city and sub-urban routes, while 60 others would be ordinary buses and operate on interstate routes.

“Financial bids for procurement of 60 ordinary buses have been received and these would be opened soon,” said Pradhuman Singh, Director, Transport, UT.

The process of buying 100 more electric buses was on with the Central Government, he said and added that all electric and ordinary buses would be procured by April this year.

In order to provide eco-friendly and green transportation in the city, the UT Transport Department planned to procure 100 more electric buses to add to the existing fleet of 80 such buses this year.

The procurement of the electric buses will give a major boost to the plan of the UT Administration to replace the entire fleet of diesel buses of the CTU, running on local or suburban routes, with electric ones by 2027-28. Theses buses will run on the routes of Chandigarh, Panchkula and Mohali. Eighty electric buses are already running on the city and sub-urban routes in the tricity.

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

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

With procurement of 60 more non-AC buses, connectivity with neighbouring states would be improved and services would be doubled on certain long-route sections. The arrival of these buses would provide better transport facilities to people on long-routes at reasonable rates, Pradhuman said, adding that the department had permits for several states and the timings of the buses had also been finalised. All these 60 ordinary buses will run from Depot No. 1.

With the procurement of these buses, the CTU will have a fleet of 238 buses on long routes.

The department had recently condemned 20 old buses, while 63 more were removed from the road earlier. These new buses are being purchased to meet the shortage of these buses. With the arrival of these, the department will have a total of 119 AC and 119 non-AC buses.