1,480 buses set to join Delhi fleet by March

The Delhi transport department plans to add 1,480 new buses to the city's fleet by March 2024, including 1,370 electric and 110 CNG buses.

The Delhi transport department is planning to add 1,480 new buses to the Capital’s fleet by March 2024, taking the number of government-run buses on the city’s streets to 7,618, officials aware of the matter said on Monday.

500 e-buses were added to the DTC fleet last week. (Arvind Yadav/HT Photo)

The officials said that these buses will be added to the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) fleet as well as to the Delhi Integrated Multi Modal Transit System Ltd (DIMTS, also called cluster buses). To be sure, these new buses will be both electric (1,370) and those operating on CNG (110).

The proposal to induct these buses coincides with the retirement plan of 1,325 DTC buses — most of these were purchased in 2008 and 2009, ahead of the 2010 Commonwealth Games hosted by Delhi. In addition, 206 buses operating under the cluster scheme will go off the road by the end of December, said a Delhi government official declining to be named.

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Public bus transport in Delhi is managed mainly by DTC and the cluster bus service. In 2021-22 — the latest year for which transport data is available — the daily average passenger ridership in DTC buses was 1.56 million, while it was 987,000 for cluster buses.

Speaking about the development, transport minister Kailash Gahlot said, “The Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government has added 1,300 e-buses in just two years, and we have a detailed bus induction plan to increase the fleet of public buses in Delhi. In the last quarter of financial year 2023-24, 1,480 buses are scheduled to be inducted into the public bus fleet. Delhi has now become the city with the most number of electric buses plying on its roads in the entire country. In the battle against pollution, electric buses have been proving to be a crucial and concrete measure.”

READ | 11 Delhi bus depots electrified, three more to be ready by February: Govt

Phasing out of buses is an annual affair — DTC buses on paper have an operational life of 12 years or 750,000km, whichever comes first. However, in 2019, the government decided to increase the operational life of buses to 15 years. Cluster buses, meanwhile, have an operational life of 10 years, officials said.