Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday announced that a new bus aggregator policy along the lines of private cab aggregators will be announced this week.
He expressed hope that after the policy announcement, many private players will come forward to bring premium bus services to the Capital.
“We will be announcing the bus aggregator policy in the next two to three days which will help in bringing premium buses on the roads of Delhi. We are hopeful that many private players will invest in premium buses after the policy is announced,” Kejriwal said.
The bus aggregators will work in a way similar to how cab-aggregators operate. People will be able to find the buses that will be passing through the neighborhood, along with the directions they are going in, and people will be able to book seats in the desired buses.
“We want car owners to give up their cars. But they will move to public transport only if we provide them good services. The buses under the new policy will be completely air conditioned will have many other modern facilities. There will be no standing passengers and the seats on the buses will be reserved,” Kejriwal said.
The CM added that the biggest challenge to his government is not finding funds for the new buses but finding place for the new buses to be parked.
“The biggest challenge is not buying buses but getting land for setting up the bus depots. The land comes under Delhi Development Authority (DDA) which is saying that we can buy land at the rate of Rs 4 crore per acre. For 500 acres needed to set up the depots, we will have to spend Rs 2,000 crore only to acquire land. We don’t agree with this because we are not asking for land for any profit-making exercise but for the service of people,” Kejriwal said.
“We have also told them to give us land on lease while DDA can retain its ownership. Once we get the land, then we can introduce a large number of buses in one go,” Kejriwal said.
The Government had earlier promised to buy 10,000 new buses. It had also said that 3,000 buses will be brought on the roads this year out of which, 1,000 will be premium buses.