The Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) on Thursday decided to float a global tender for 1,725 buses to augment its fleet.
According to specifications agreed upon during the DTC board meet, they will either be standard floor (900 mm height) or semi-low floor buses (650 mm). The corporation will also acquire 345 air-conditioned buses to meet demand. Senior officials said DTC is already facing a shortage of buses, which will be further aggravated by next year as standard floor buses will have to be scrapped. According to regulations, buses which have been travelled over 5 lakh km are considered scrap.
In April, DTC opened a bid to purchase 625 buses — 125 AC low floor and 500 non-AC low floor. But what with old buses being scrapped and inordinate delays in purchase, DTC revised requirement to meet ridership demands.
The earlier tender was rendered null and void after bus manufacturer Tata quoted exorbitantly high prices. "The purchasing cost quoted by Tata for an AC bus was Rs 76 lakh. The manufacturer also inflated maintenance charges multiple times to Rs 75 per km, from Rs 3.20 per km at present. Due to this, DTC will place a global tender to acquire buses for its fleet," said Transport Minister Ramakant Goswami.
Of the 5,400-strong DTC fleet, over 1,500 are standard floor buses, bought between 2001 and 2003. According to officials, most of these are already way past their sell-by date. "Mechanical wear and tear of these buses is very high as a DTC bus, on an average, completes around 200 km per day. DTC is forced to keep back buses from scrap due to delays in acquiring new buses. This results in huge losses due to mounting maintenance costs and repeated mechanical faults," said a DTC official.
He added that the old buses will be scrapped in a phase-wise manner and 500 have to be replaced with new ones every year. However, with new buses not arriving on schedule, the process could not be followed.
