Amid the predicament faced by daily commuters, the civic body for the capital city has something to cheer about. Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) to relieve some of this pressure is going ahead to add 11 more city buses into the fleet of 40 buses already plying in Ranchi.
“Repair work being done on eleven city buses has been completed recently and they are currently in line for getting the approval of fitness. The applications for the same took some time to get cleared. We expect these buses to start doing the rounds in a week to ten days,” stated Ramendra Prasad of Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM) Cell under Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC).
In the past five days of the indefinite strike called by diesel auto drivers has left daily commuters with inadequate alternative modes of public transport since originally beginning with 70 buses, the public transit service has been riddled with problems. Restarted in the middle of 2015 with 20-odd buses, efforts have been made to raise this number by repairing the rest. Unavailability of spare parts had played spoilsport in the project, but not for long.
“Getting spare parts has been difficult as Swaraj Mazda, the company we brought the buses from, closed business in the state soon after the purchase. We are presently in talks with the company to find ways to sort out the difficulties in this regard,” Prasad said.
This addition might help, but there remain doubts whether it will make any substantial difference. In absence of diesel auto-rickshaws, the city buses have been carrying passengers almost twice their actual capacity, with still more waiting to get on.
“As of now, we need extra 250 city buses to cover Ranchi in its entirety. With the 40 buses we have now, the service is more or less concentrated on the Tupudana to Kanke Road route. More buses will help in expanding it to other crucial routes of the city,” stated Kishore Mantri, proprietor of KM Travels, the firm tasked with managing the city bus service in Ranchi.
From ITI bus stand to Dhurwa, Booty More to Albert Ekka Chowk are few of the routes that we wish to cover, as other routes are being explored, added Mantri. “With more buses, we can increase the frequency of rounds one bus makes, eliminating the dependency on diesel-run autos,” he said.
These plans will have to wait though, as there are no plans to increase the number of city buses apart from the eleven buses ready to join the roster. “Plans to bring in unused buses from other districts have been dropped. There are no plans to buy new buses either,” informed Prasad.