Transport dept to open tenders for procuring 13 electric vessels next year

Kolkata: The Transport department will open tenders for selecting the agency for manufacturing 13 electric vessels in January 2024 and expects to roll out the fleet of electric vessels - the first of its kind in the state - by December 2024.

There will be nine vessels of 100-seating capacity and another four with 200. “If everything goes as per plan we will be placing orders for manufacture of these vessels by February 2024. The construction is expected to take 10 months.

By December 2024 or January 2025, the riverine route in the state will for the first time have electric vessels. The total expenditure for these e-vessels will be Rs 312 crore,” said a senior official of the Transport department.

The 100-seater vessels will ply in the outskirts of the city while those with 200 capacity will travel within Kolkata. Presently, 138 vessels are operating among which 50 per cent that were procured in the last 10 years are less polluting. Rest of the fleet procured over the years since 1978 to 1990 are highly polluting. “The old vessels that comprise 50 per cent of the running fleet are diesel-operated.

Diesel, which is a highly polluting fossil, gets released into the water directly. In the vessels procured after 2011, the bilge water is stored in separate tanks and the civic body collects the same for disposal. Twenty two new diesel-operated vessels are already in operation,” the official added.

The introduction of e-vessels is one of the parameters of the ‘Inland Water Transport and Modal Integration of Transport and Urban Upgradation’ project taken up by the state government. The total cost of the project is Rs 1021 crore out of which the World Bank loan is around Rs 700 crore.

The manufacturing cost of an e-vessel is over Rs 15 crore which is higher than the ones driven by fossil fuel which entails an expenditure of Rs 4 crore. However, the running cost will be negligible as it will involve only the charging cost.

The operating cost of a fossil-fuel vessel is high. As per estimates, Rs 1 to 1.5 lakh for each vessel will be saved every month once the switchover is complete. Around 30 -35 litres diesel is required by each vessel for daily cross-ferry service.