Nagpur: Being the lifeline of common people, the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) is adding to its fleet 1000 electric, 2000 CNG and 500 ordinary buses within a year. In the first phase, 150 e-buses will enter the ST convoy. 50 e-buses will be supplied by e-Moves and 100 by Evey Trans Company of Hyderabad through the tender process. Similarly, 2000 new CNG buses will be purchased through the tender process. Talks are on with Ashok Leyland and Tata.
Presently MSRTC has 15, 877 buses in its fleet comprising Ordinary, Comfortable, Self-owned, Shivshahi, Shivneri, and Ashwamedh. Out of these, about 4500 have been in poor condition and the Corporation has not bought a single new bus in the last three years. Therefore, 3,500 new buses will be purchased in a year.
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The decision to hire 500 ordinary red buses for eight years was taken 8 to 10 months ago. Out of this, 320 buses will start coming from the company which was successful in the tender process in two to three months. The bus will have ‘two by two’ comfortable (push back) seating and attractive colour scheme. The driver of this bus will be of the contractor and the conductor will be of MSRTC.
At present ST has a fleet of 12,828 ordinary buses. The new buses will be 12-metre long. Similarly, 2000 new CNG buses will be purchased through the tender process. Talks are on with Ashok Leyland and Tata. Also, the old 1000 diesel buses will be converted to CNG.
In the first phase, 150 Shivai buses will be hired and the MSRTC plans to increase their number to 1000 within a year. Through the tender process, 50 buses have been leased to E-Moves and 100 buses to Evey Trans Company. In the first phase, 50 buses will run from Pune to Kolhapur, Solapur, Aurangabad, Nashik, and 100 buses will run from Pune to Thane, Dadar, Borivali.
Charging stations are being built at ST depots. The first round of ‘Shivai’ electric bus will take place on the Ahmednagar to Pune route, justifying the ST Corporation’s launch in its 75th year on June 1. The first ST bus ran on this route.
