Keep car at home, swanky public transport is here

Delhi can now look forward to a much improved and reliable public transport system.

Delhi can now look forward to a much improved and reliable public transport system.

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With more than 6,000 buses in Delhi Transport Corporation's (DTC) fleet and almost 2,500 blueline buses still having permits to ply in the Capital, Delhi has record number of buses to cater to 1.7 million people.

According to senior DTC officials, about 1,400 buses, which were deployed on the Commonwealth Games duty to ferry athletes, delegates, officials, media and security personnel to the Games Village and the venues, will be back on road for ordinary people from October 24.

"We are going to deploy these buses on routes that have fewer buses. About 600 of these buses are air-conditioned. Delhiites will not only have more buses, they will have comfortable low floor buses - both AC and non-AC - to travel across the city," a senior DTC official said.

DTC has also decided to start commercial use of world's largest bus depot at Millennium Park. With parking facility for almost 1,000 buses, DTC will use this bus depot exclusively for low floor buses.

"We will initially have about 800 buses at this depot. We will run buses for East, South and Central Delhi from here. Since most of the bus routes will originate from close to this bus depot, it will also help us reducing dead mileage and increase operational revenue," the DTC official added.

Fuel wasted on empty buses that run from the bus depot to the bus terminal at the beginning of the shift and end of shift is known as dead mileage in DTC's terminology.

While a chief general manager level officer will manage Millennium Park bus depot initially, Delhi Government sources said DTC is likely to appoint an IAS officer as joint managing director to operate this depot.