Metro promises to expand feeder fleet

In a bid to provide last-mile connectivity to lakhs of Metro commuters, a parliamentary panel has asked the urban development ministry to add 300 feeder buses to the existing fleet within six months. HT reports.

In a bid to provide last-mile connectivity to lakhs of Metro commuters, a parliamentary panel has asked the urban development ministry to add 300 feeder buses to the existing fleet within six months.

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The parliamentary standing committee on urban development had inquired about the provision of feeder buses during discussions on the ministry’s demand for grants for 2012-13 this Friday.

The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has promised to add 300 more buses to its feeder service within months, despite failing to keep its promise after inviting tenders twice in the past two years because of unspecified “technical reasons”.

“The DMRC is committing that 300 AC buses will start plying in the next six months. It will, however, effectively become a city bus service. Therefore, it will have to be handled by the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC). The DMRC will also chip in,” Sudhir Krishna, the urban development secretary, told the standing committee.

The 300 new buses were initially scheduled to be delivered by April 2010. The delivery was postponed to sometime before the Commonwealth Games to provide feeder bus connectivity to all 11 venues from different Metro stations.

On October 12 last year, the DMRC floated a tender for procuring and operating 300 non-AC buses. This tender document was later edited to include AC buses. In 2010, the DMRC had procured 150 buses from Swaraj Mazda to run on feeder routes. But the buses were later returned to the company as the corporation did not find suitable third-party operators for them.

If these buses are added to the fleet of feeder buses, the number of Delhi Metro’s feeder buses will be 420, including existing the 120 buses that run on 16 routes.