In order to improve urban mobility and decongest city traffic, the State Government will introduce city bus service in three more town clusters spread over Cuttack- Choudwar, Baleswar-Bhadrak and Jeypur-Koraput-Sunabeda, taking the total clusters with availability of the service to six under the JNNURM scheme.
The service in the three town clusters would be rolled out by December next by setting up separate Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs), said Urban Development Department Special Secretary SK Ratho on Tuesday.
Besides, for the first time, the State Government would also introduce state-of-the-art Intelligent Traffic System (ITS) with GPS linkage of city buses in Bhubaneswar as part of the passenger information system. The computerised system would be installed at an estimated cost of `3 crore. The system would help passengers know about the arrival, departure and position of the buses at the bus stops. The system would be installed first in the major stoppages at Bhubaneswar and later in phases in other places.
Ratho said that considering a huge demand for urban transport system and to tackle the mobility challenge, the State Government had submitted proposals for five more clusters –Cuttack-Choudwar, Baleswar-Bhadrakh, Jeypur-Koraput-Sunabeda, Rourkela-Biramitrapur and Balangir-Titilagarh-Patnagarah for introduction of the service under the JnNRUM. However, the Union Urban Development Ministry had approved three cases. The left out two proposals would be again submitted to the Union Government for approval, he said.
At present, city bus service is being operationalised under the JNNRUM in three clusters- Bhubaneswar-Puri-Cuttack-Khurda and Jatni, Brahmapur-Chhatrapur-Gopalpur and Sambalpur-Jharsuguda –Hirakud and Burla with separate SPVs.
Stating that as many as 194 new fleets of buses would ply in the three new clusters, Ratho said that very soon SPVs would be created and tender would be invited for purchase of buses and development of infrastructure for the purpose and the buses are scheduled to operate by the end of this year.
Ratho said that with the increase of population, improved roads and huge traffic generation in Cuttack, it was decided to make Cuttack an independent cluster for running the city bus service. While 100 buses will operate in the Cuttack-Chowdwar route, 54 buses will ply on the Baleswar-Bhadrak circuit and 40 buses will run on the Jeypore-Koraput-Sunabeda cluster.
The Special Secretary said at present 125 buses were operating in 17 routes in the Bhubaneswar-Cuttack-Puri circuit under the SPV BPTSl, besides eight AC buses. Very soon, a plan to augment the existing routes and inclusion of new routes would be finalised, he said, adding the Dream Team Sahara had been roped in to manage the city bus service with pre-defined revenue sharing model.
He said that within two years of the introduction of the city bus service in Bhubaneswar cluster, there had been tremendous response from the city goers. On an average, as many as 75,000 passengers are using the city bus service in the route every day now against only 12,000 passengers in 2010 when the service was first introduced. He said very soon 72 more buses, including 12 AC buses, would be added to the fleet on the Bhubanswar-Cuttack-Puri segment. The Special Secretary said a high level meeting held under the Chairmanship of Development Commissioner I Srinivasan on Tuesday reviewed the functioning of the BPTSl and two other SPVs. During the meeting it was decided to resolve the problems faced by the operators of the city bus services by taking strong action against the anti-socials and the ticket less travellers. The meeting also decided to finalise the city wise route plan of the buses for smooth operation.