TRIALS HELD FOR GURUGRAM BUS SERVICE, LAUNCH TOMORROW

GURUGRAM: Ahead of its Sunday launch, a trial run of the Gurugaman bus service was conducted on Friday, with 12 buses running at an interval of about 10 minutes from the upcoming depot in Sector 10 near Basai Chowk to Huda City Centre.

The first bus left around 4.58pm and took roughly two hours to reach Huda City Centre and back.

The bus service, run by the Gurugram Metropolitan City Bus Service Limited (GMCBL), will be launched on Sunday at 9.30am after being in the pipeline for two years. The project will be rolled out in two phases, as part of which a total of 500 buses will operate across 26 routes in Gurugram. Once launched, the buses are likely to operate at a frequency of about nine minutes during peak hours and 18 minutes during nonpeak hours.

Speaking to HT, V Umashankar, CEO GMDA, said he was happy with the manner in which it was executed. “The buses ran on schedule. We will be conducting another dry run on Saturday morning between 9am and 10am,” he said.

He added that the purpose of the dry runs was to synchronise operations between the various administrative and executive teams of the GMCBL. He also said that the route – Huda City Centre to Basai Chowk – had been picked as the inaugural route as it had the highest footfall and also because it would connect older and newer parts of Gurugram.

In the first phase of the launch, which is to conclude by March 2019, 200 odd buses will start operating along 11 routes.