After making several announcements regarding procuring 10,000 new buses, the Delhi Government has decided to go in another direction. In a move that may bring back the era of infamous Blue line buses back to Delhi, sources in the Government have revealed that the Government is planning to ask private transporters to buy buses and run them in the city and be paid by the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) on a per kilometer basis. This means that DTC may not get even a single bus.
It must be noted that it has been over three months since the DTC had sent a proposal for buying 1,380 semi-low-floor buses and 500 midi-buses to the Delhi Government. According to a DTC official, they had been waiting for the Cabinet nod on the proposal so that the tender to buy new buses could be floated.
Sources also said it isn't still clear if the new buses brought under the new model will be low-floor, semi-low-floor or standard floor buses since the cost of low-floor and semi-low-floor buses is comparatively high. With these details yet to be figured out, it may still take a while to actually bring the new buses on the roads.
It must also be noted that while responding to National Green Tribunals' question regarding how many of the 10,000 buses will be brought on the road, the Delhi Government had said that 1,380 new semi-low-floor buses and 500 midi-buses will be purchased by April 2016. However, Cabinet is still sitting tight on the DTC's proposal to purchase those buses, sources said.
It was in 2009 that DTC had last procured buses. Ever since then, no new buses have been incorporated into the ever-reducing fleet of the DTC.
Over the last three years, multiple tenders had been issued to procure new buses, but they all failed reportedly because of a contentious maintenance clause that bound the bus manufacturers to maintain the buses as well. However, in a bid to successfully procure new buses, the Government had earlier this year announced that the maintenance clause will be removed and that DTC will itself maintain its fleet of buses. It still isn't clear that even after announcing the scrapping of the contentious maintenance clause, what hurdle remained in procuring new buses for the DTC.
It must also be noted that the DTC has the approved capacity of 5,500 buses, but is running only around 4,700 buses at the moment.
Out of those, around 900 buses are old normal-floor buses that will soon need to be phased out. It means that DTC needs these 1,380 new buses to bring its fleet to complete strength.