Free rides on 150 new e-buses for 3 days as govt bolsters fleet
HT Correspondent
NEW DELHI: The Delhi government will roll out 150 new electric buses on Tuesday and allow free rides on them for three days, transport minister Kailash Gahlot announced on Monday.
“Tomorrow is a huge day for all Delhiites! Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal will flag off 150 new electric buses and inaugurate three new electric depots on Tuesday. Come, ride for free in our electric buses for the next three days, experience the comfort and also stand a chance to win an ipad,” the minister said.
The government will also hold a social media contest by asking people to take selfies in the buses and post it on their profiles for a chance to win the ipads.
The 150 e-buses that will be added to the city’s bus fleet on Tuesday are a part of the Delhi Transport Corporation’s (DTC) plan to procure 300 e-buses. Two have already arrived since February this year, and 150 more will be added on Tuesday.
Additionally, DTC is also going to get 1,500 more electric buses next year.
It has already readied three depots for electric buses that are equipped with charging stations. These three depots include the ones at Mundela Kalan, Rajghat and Rohini which will also be inaugurated on Tuesday.
Tuesday’s arrival of new buses will be the first major induction of buses by the DTC after the Commonwealth Games in 2010, senior transport officials said on
Saturday.
However, 300 buses are still not enough for the DTC to upgrade its fleet because almost 58% of its current fleet of 3,762 buses are eligible to be scrapped, and nearly 99% are “overaged” -an issue first reported by HT on July 26 last year.
On January 17 this year, the first electric bus under this lot was flagged off by chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in the city. It was also the first time that DTC has managed to procure a bus since 2011, after at least five failed tenders.
Delhi currently has 7,081 buses, of which 3,762 are DTC buses and 3,319 are cluster buses. As per Supreme Court’s mandate, Delhi should have 11,000 buses with both the DTC and cluster scheme having 5,500 buses each.
According to data from before Covid when there were no curbs, DTC and cluster buses together catered to about 4.2 million passengers every day, and the Delhi Metro saw about 2.4 million commuters daily.
“At the time of the previous court orders regarding fleet size, Delhi’s Metro was either not there at all or the network was negligible and therefore, having 11,000 buses was estimated based on the assumption that buses will be the only and primary mode of public transport. But, over the years, the passenger ridership has split between the state-run buses and the Metro,” said a senior transport official on condition of anonymity.