Delhi Cabinet on Friday approved a proposal to procure 2,000 buses including 1,000 cluster buses to strengthen public transportation in the national Capital.
After the Cabinet meeting, Delhi Transport Minister Ashok Gehlot informed that these non-AC, standard-floor buses will be rolled out within a year.
Gehlot said that the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) would be responsible for maintaining its new fleet. Earlier, DTC buses were being maintained by the company supplying the vehicles. "As per the decision, the Government would procure a total of 2,000 buses, which includes 1,000 DTC and 1,000 cluster buses. All these buses would be standard-floor buses. In next eight months, cluster buses will start operating. DTC's new fleet will come in one year," Gahlot said. The Transport Minister also dismissed reports that the DTC would be shut down due to shortage of buses.
"After almost four years, DTC will get new buses and in view of this it is a historic decision (to procure new buses)," Gahlot has tweeted.
The Delhi Government had recently scrapped the Annual Maintenance Clause (AMC) from its tendering process for procurement of buses which made it mandatory for bus manufacturers to look after the upkeep and maintenance of buses after selling it to the Delhi Government.
The DTC has a fleet of 3,944 buses. The Delhi Integrated Multimodal Transit System (DIMTS) also runs 1,634 buses under the cluster scheme.
The combined strength of around 5,600 buses manages to cover nearly 75 per cent of the identified routes in the city. Further, a total of 799 mini stage carriage buses ply on 124 routes, as per the Transport department statistics.
The State Transport Authority has identified 657 routes, while the DTC has earmarked 208 more for bus operations. The cluster buses run on 124 of these routes and the DTC operates on 465.
The total number of buses including those run by the DTC, cluster ones and mini stage carriers comes to about 6,300. The proposed purchase of 1,000 bues will take the number to 7,300 leaving the fleet short of 3,700 buses to reach the required 11,000 figure.
The Government has identified a total of 865 routes for operation of buses and the Transport Department has been able to ply buses on 714 of these routes, with many stretches having fewer than required number of buses serving them.