A total of 235 out of a fleet of 423 Aapli Bus vehicles will go off road next year, thus putting extreme pressure on the Nagpur Municipal Corporation to meet the ever-increasing demand for efficient public transport.
While 235 buses will be removed, the NMC is banking on 384 AC e-buses which are expected to hit the roads in future under state and central government schemes.
“Next year, these buses with capacity of 41 will complete 15 years, hence the need to scrap them,” said a senior NMC transport department official. Of these, five buses have been discarded in the past because of accidental fires. All these buses were brought under JNNURM in 2009.
“Currently, the NMC is operating around 170 out of the 235 buses, which includes 70 converted to CNG. All of them will be scrapped between January and October 2024,” the official said.
The scrapping of these buses will impact the Aapli Bus fleet strength significantly as their passengers carrying capacity is more (41 seats) as compared to midi and mini buses. Already, several buses can be seen plying beyond capacity during peak hours, especially on Hingna, Kamptee, Pardi and Butibori routes.
The JNNURM buses to be scrapped were operated by Vansh Nimay Infraprojects Limited from 2007 to 2016. Before that the city bus transport was under Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC). But Vansh Nimay Infraprojects Ltd failed to maintain this fleet of standard buses and the NMC handed over the operations contract to three red bus operators.
Each maintenance operator got 79 standard buses each. Collectively, the three operators added 150 midi and 45 mini buses to the existing fleet of 237 standard buses. However, even the red bus operators failed to maintain them well, said sources. During this period, the NMC bought six electric buses under state’s Tejaswani Scheme and later added another fleet of 40 e-buses with the help of Union government.
Meanwhile, Nagpur Smart and Sustainable City Development Corporation Limited (NSSCDCL) provided 40 air conditioned electric buses. Recently, the NMC placed an order for 144 AC e-buses to PMI Electro Mobility Solutions Private Limited, a Haryana-based company. It has already delivered 10 buses and is set to complete the delivery of remaining 134 buses by December.
Dy CM Devendra Fadnavis too gave a grant of INR 137 crore .
