With its fleet dwindling as old standard-floor buses are being phased out and no new bus added for years, the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) seems to be facing a crisis.
Against an approved capacity of 5,500 buses, the DTC has merely 4,200 odd buses plying on the roads out of which, around 500 standard-floor buses will have to be phased out soon leaving it short of around 1,800 buses.
“Around 500 standard-floor buses are older than eight years and have already run more than 5 lakh kilometres. As soon as the new buses arrive, or they encounter any technical issues, they will have to be phased out. It could be tomorrow, or months from now,” said a DTC official.
The deficiency of the DTC fleet could be gauged from the fact that during the implementation of the odd-even scheme in January as well as in April, the Delhi Government had to hire buses from the private operators to provide service to commuters.
In fact, the strength of the DTC fleet has been constantly declining since 2011 despite a significant increase in the city population. At the end of financial year 2010-11, the DTC had more buses than its mandate with a fleet strength of 6,197 buses. Also, 2010-11 was the year when the most number of buses were acquired by the corporation in a single year. However, ever since then, only 32 buses have been added to the fleet (in 2011-12) while around 2,000 buses have been phased out. With around 22 per cent of Delhiites commuting by bus, the share of buses among all registered vehicles in the city had gone down from 1.52 in 1980-81 to 0.36 in 2014-15.
The DTC currently has 2,506 low-floor non-air conditioned buses, 1,275 low-floor air conditioned buses and 445 standard-floor buses taking its total fleet to 4,226. However, as per the adopted age norms of the corporation, the standard-floor buses need to be phased out once they complete eight years or run five lakh kilometers. This means that the 445 standard buses will have to be phased out soon leaving the DTC with only 3,781 buses against its mandate of 5,500 buses.
A senior official of the State-run corporation said while the old buses had a life of eight years, the new low-floor buses can run till they are 12 years old. “This means that the life of these new buses is 50 per cent more than the old standard buses. So after the phasing out of 445 standard buses, there will be no more reduction in the fleet size of the Corporation for the next 4-5 years,” the official said.
However, what is a cause of concern is that it was in 2011-12 when 32 new low-floor were acquired the last time.
“There is surely a gap between the demand and supply. With lack of sufficient number of buses, people have moved to two-wheelers which provide a flexible mode of transport at a very low cost of under Rs 1 per kilometer. Unless new buses are added, it will be difficult to change this trend,” the official said.
When asked about what the Corporation is doing to improve the situation, Dr RS Minhas Deputy Chief General Manager (PR) of DTC said, “We have constantly been trying to improve our fleet utilisation. We have also been trying to bring down the number of breakdowns so as to improve the efficiency of the fleet. To do that, we have been imposing penalties on the manufacturers, who are also responsible for the maintenance of the buses.”
While acknowledging that there is a need to improve services to the public, Minhas said it can be done only by acquiring more buses. “Currently, there is a need for 11,000 buses in the city out of which both the DTC and the Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System (DIMTS) have to run 5,500 buses each. If the total fleet strength is increased to the required number, there won’t be any problem for the people of Delhi. We have been trying to procure new buses. But the tenders that we issued couldn’t go through because the bus companies don’t want to maintain the buses like they have been doing for the existing low-floor fleet. We have again initiated process to acquire 1,380 low-floor buses. As soon as we get the approval, we will issue the tender,” Minhas added.
It must be noted that the DTC had prepared a proposal to buy 1,380 semi-low-floor buses and 500 medium-sized (midi) buses. However, the proposal has not yet been approved by the Delhi Cabinet. It is also noteworthy that the former Transport Minister Gopal Rai had promised to procure 3,000 new buses by the end of this year.