Delhi Allows Standard Floor Buses to Battle Delay in Low-floor

Wednesday, Feb 03, 2010

Even as the delivery of low floor buses could take some time, the Delhi cabinet Wednesday decided to allow private companies to buy standard floor buses to bridge the demand gap.

'The cabinet has also decided to allow standard floor modern city buses to be inducted by the private entities in the cluster scheme. The decision has been taken to overcome delay in implementation of the whole cluster scheme,' said Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit.

'This will help in phasing out the existing Blueline buses,' she added.

At present the Blueline buses are run by individual operators who have either a single bus or or number of buses. Under the cluster scheme that was cleared by the government in November 2009, the capital has been divided into 17 clusters.

Every cluster would be run by a single operator only which would be selected by a bidding process. A cluster is a group of bus routes chosen on the basis of topography and traffic surveys to make it financially viable for the private operators.

According to a transport department official 'the decision to allow standard floor buses was taken due to the delay in supply of low floor buses.'

The government had planned to phase out Blueline buses by March 2010. But according to the transport department official, the city will miss the deadline and the phaseout will take few more months.

Original news source http://www.vamban.com/delhi-allows-standard-floor-buses-to-battle-delay-in-low-floor/