Frustrated after several failed attempts to find any suitable player and sustainable model for plying city buses in capital Ranchi, the Government is now going to try for a better luck. Instead of Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) the Urban Development Department has decided to rope in Ranchi Smart City Corporation Limited; the firm working under Smart City Mission.
The decision has come following the RMC’s latest attempt to invite any operator for running city buses in Ranchi yielded no result hence bringing the whole effort to provide public transportation system for the residents back to square one.
“The Department has decided to hand over the task to find operator for operating city bus service in Ranchi to Smart City Corporation itself. This is because we have found that the RMC is unable to handle it despite going for rounds of tendering process time and again,” said Ajoy Kumar Singh, Principal Secretary with the Department on Wednesday.
He also discussed with consultants coming to a summit oragnised by the Department over suitable model to operate buses in the city. “We can go for a mix of GCC Hybrid model and pay per kilometer model for the operators here. Also different models can be worked out for different routes of Ranchi depending on their viability and suitability,” said the official during an investors’ meet for development of city bus stands on PPP in cities of Jharkhand.
This apart the Department is looking for overall revamp of transport system for selected cities and town of the State; 10 at present on the PPP mode. Under the plan private players would be roped in to develop existing bus stands located at Dhanbad, Mango (East Singhbhum), Chaibasa (West Singhbhum), Giridih, Phusro (Bokaro), Medininagar (Palamu), Dumka, Godda, Simdega and Gumla along with three inter-state bus terminuses at Ranchi, Dhanbad and Deoghar.
“The Department invited bids and prepared DPR for these projects but we got no response whatsoever. We want to know why this happening is and why no investor is looking forward to come and invest in transportation sector in Jharkhand. We already have policy for urban transportation and are even open to rectify it if there are some discouraging factors into it for the investors. Also we should first go for bigger cities like Ranchi, Dhanbad and Jamshedpur in the first phase and then look for the others,” said Ajoy Kumar Singh.
He also stressed over replicating good experiences from Gujarat, Maharashtra and other places here where PPP model into public transportation have done well and are being run successfully. Some investors attending the summit indicated towards higher circle rate the developer needs to pay before developing the existing facilities and issues related to land for the cold response.