Ghaziabad municipal corporation chalks 10 revised routes for e-bus project

The Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation has finalised 10 new routes for the intracity travel as part of its e-bus project, under which the city has been approved a fleet

The Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation has finalised 10 new routes for the intracity travel as part of its e-bus project, under which the city has been approved a fleet of 50 low-floor and air-conditioned electric buses. The officials said that the new routes will also connect the neighbouring city of Noida and will prove to be beneficial for the commuters of Ghaziabad and its neighbourhood.

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The proposal for the new routes has now been sent to the traffic police department for feedback. The officials privy to the matter said the suggestions forwarded by the traffic police will be incorporated and the proposal will be sent to the state government for approval.

The e-bus project was given clearance by the UP state cabinet in October last year. At that time, the state cabinet approved the operation of about 700 e-buses in 14 cities, including Ghaziabad.

“We have finalised 10 new routes and the proposal for the same will be forwarded to the traffic police for inputs. Once their inputs are incorporated, we will send the proposal to the state officials. The earlier routes had connecting points to Dadri and Pilkhuwa, which we have not been included now, as we want to cater to as many routes in the city as possible,” said MS Tanwar, municipal commissioner.

The corporation in December last year chalked out six new routes, which have now been revised to 10 new routes.

“We have already provided land for the depot. Once the routes are finalised, we will chalk out the points for charging stations. These will be allotted at the roadside while keeping in mind that regular traffic is not hampered. One e-bus has the capacity to travel about 200 kilometres once fully charged,” he added.

The proposal includes routes from Surya Nagar to Indirapuram and further to Noida City Centre, Govindpuram to UP-Gate on NH-9, Shalimar Garden to Ghaziabad Railway Station, Vijay Nagar to Noida City Centre, Anand Vihar border to Mohan Nagar and further up to ALT Centre, Raj Nagar and Dilshad Garden to Mohan Nagar and further to Old Bus Stand and Govindpuram, and Mohan Nagar to Raj Nagar Extension, which will extend to NH-9.

The maintenance depot for the e-bus project is proposed to be developed over an area of about 25,000 square metres for which land has been provided in Akbarpur-Behrampur located near the Ghaziabad-Greater Noida Link Road.

“The depot is scheduled for completion by March 31. We issued a tender but only one bidder responded. So, we are in process of issuing fresh tenders. Once the bids arrive, our headquarters will take a call,” said Umesh Shukla, project manager from the Construction & Design Services, a unit of UP Jal Nigam, which has been given the task to develop the depot.

The entire project of the construction of the charging station/maintenance depot is estimated at ₹10 crore. The project was scheduled to be completed by October but got delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Earlier in August 2019, the department of heavy industries had sanctioned 5,595 e-buses across 64 cities while 600 of these were approved for 11 cities of Uttar Pradesh, including 50 buses for Ghaziabad.

The approval was made under the Phase 2 of the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles in India scheme in order to push for cleaner mobility in public transportation.

The buses have been proposed to ply for about 4 billion kilometres during their contract period and are expected to cumulatively save about 1.2 billion litres of fuel over the contract period, which will, in turn, save approximately 2.6 million tonnes of CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions.