City bus routes to be realigned considering Metro Rail routes
| Date :09-Aug-2019 |
Staff Reporter :
Despite reminders, cops have not booked conductors involved in pilferage of ticketing revenue, says Municipal Commissioner
Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has initiated several steps to streamline the functioning of city bus service. According to Abhijit Bangar, Municipal Commissioner, the civic body is making efforts to reduce the revenue loss of Rs 80 crore to Rs 90 crore incurred per annum. “The city bus service serves as a means of public transport. Hence, its prime objective is to provide service to citizens and not to earn profit. Still, we are trying to bring down losses so as to achieve better efficiency of functioning,” Bangar told mediapersons on Thursday evening.
The losses, he said, should not be interpreted as due to mismanagement. NMC has offered concessions to family members of military/police martyrs. Monthly passes are issued on discount. Despite low ridership, NMC had to run city bus service to provide facility to the citizens, he added. Asked about problems being faced by people as city bus service was not available on some routes, the Municipal Commissioner said that the work of route re-alignment was in progress. Delhi Integrated Multimodal Transit System Limited (DIMTS) has been asked to come up with plan for re-alignment of city bus routes and also to suggest new routes to cover untouched areas.
“The focus of this re-alignment will be to make city bus service act as feeder for Metro Rail. The public transport, henceforth, will place Metro Rail in the centre and other modes will feed the train service,” he said. Regarding pilferage of revenue from ticketing, Bangar admitted that there were elements involved in pilferage in an organised manner. NMC is thinking over several technological options to curb the pilferage, he said. One of the ideas is to install sensors in bus doors to monitor how many persons had boarded a bus. The number will be tallied with the tickets issued by conductor on respective bus. This way, pilferage can be detected.
However, he said, there were some other ideas too. Replying to a question, he said that NMC had asked City Police to book the conductors involved in revenue pilferage but the cops were ‘yet to initiate any action’. Recently, Bangar told reporters, he had written a demi-official letter to Dr B K Upadhyay, Commissioner of Police, in this regard. As far as switching over of city buses from diesel to compressed natural gas (CNG) is concerned, the Municipal Commissioner said that some buses were already converted. All the city buses will run on CNG in a phased manner. The city of Nagpur generates around 50 metric tonnes of food waste, he added. A proposal regarding converting food waste generated in the city into CNG will be incorporated in detailed project report for CNG plant, he informed the reporters.
Nagpur to get 100 electric buses Department of Heavy Industry, on Thursday, approved sanction of total 5,595 electric buses to 64 cities in the country, State Government entities, State Transport undertakings for intra-city and inter-city operations, under second phase of Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles (FAME) scheme. Under the scheme, the city of Nagpur also will get 100 electric buses. Already, Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has launched five electric buses under ‘Tejaswini’ service especially for women. NMC was waiting for some more electric buses to be inducted into city bus service. With the new 100 buses sanctioned for the city of Nagpur, the city bus service will get an ‘eco-friendly’ boost. Under FAME-II scheme, total 725 electric buses are being made available to six cities in Maharashtra. These include 100 being provided to Nagpur.