MillenniumPost
Bengal

State Transport department to introduce electric buses in city

Kolkata: In a bid to further improve bus services in the city and make it pollution free, the state Transport department is going to introduce 80 electric buses in Kolkata.
It may be mentioned that the state Transport department has already taken several initiatives to improve bus services in the city and other parts of the state.
Initially, the decision was to introduce electric buses in Rajarhat, Bidhannagar, New Town, East Midnapore, now the state Transport is introducing the same in the Kolkata and Durgapur-Asansol route.
It may be mentioned that the 34-seater electric buses will be immensely helpful as there will be no pollution and total number of buses in these areas will also increase with the introduction of the electric buses. The World Bank is going to fund a part of the project cost. It is learnt that it would cost around Rs 1 crore to introduce one electric bus and around Rs 60 lakh subsidy will be given by the World Bank for each of the electric buses.
The state transport department has already bought 20 electric buses that will be made operational in Rajarhat and New Town. It is further learnt that the electric buses that will operate in Kolkata will be taken to the tram depots for recharging the batteries in the buses. Similarly, buses that will operate in Durgapur-Asansol will be recharged at the bus depots of South bengal State Transport Corporation (SBSTC).
Besides introducing the electric buses, the state transport department is also going to add 418 more buses in its existing fleet.
The state Transport department would also ply CNG buses all across the state. It may be mentioned that both maintenance and fuel cost will be much lesser compared to those of the diesel run buses. Some CNG buses already ply in Durgapur.
In the past one and a half years, the state Transport department has introduced an app through which buses operating in Kolkata and its adjoining areas can be tracked. One can easily identify a bus on a particular route through the "Pathadisha" app.
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