The Delhi government is planning to buy 10,000 more buses for the city and is considering to rent space to park the entire fleet of buses at night.
The Delhi government is planning to improve bus transportation services in the city by planning to buy 10,000 more buses. However, there isn’t enough space to park its current lot of 4700 Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) buses and 1300 ‘cluster buses (operate in a public-private partnership) as such at night. So the addition of 10,000 more buses will only add to the pre-existing problem of the lack of parking space. As a result of this, the government is exploring the option of renting space for parking buses at night.
At present, DTC claims to have the world’s biggest fleet of buses operating on clean fuel (CNG) and like the Delhi Metro, it offers the cheapest mode of public transportation in Delhi. As of now, there are 46 DTC depots in the city which cannot completely accommodate the current fleet itself. Therefore, drivers park their buses by the roadside at night which leads them to face various sorts of issues in the hands of the Delhi Police, who do not report to the AAP controlled Delhi government. The Delhi government is looking for land to build more depots, but land alone is very expensive and land matters in the National Capital Region is handled by the central government.
The government is looking for the availability of large areas for rent at night, like school playgrounds, etc. The city government needs 200 acres to park its entire fleet, but only 10 acres is available at the moment. The existing depots are too small and cramped as well. For encouraging people to use public transport, the government will be buying 10,000 more buses, but the central government is not providing any land for constructing depots. An acre of commercial land costs around Rs. 50 crores, hence, thousands of crores will have to be shelled out just to create more bus depots. Nearly 4.5 million people use DTC buses on a daily basis, which comes to a poor ratio of one bus for every 1000 passengers (one bus has a capacity of 75).
