Delhi Metro to handover fleet of 100 feeder electric buses to govt from April

Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) will start handing over its fleet of 100 feeder electric buses to the city government from April, a senior official from the department informed PTI. Currently, these e-buses are running on six routes in the city. This batch will be the first fleet of electric buses deployed by Delhi Metro in the city.

Feeder buses are used to provide last-mile connectivity, and commuters can even use the DMRC smart cards accepted for payment of fare charges. DMRC officials had in July last year said that running Delhi Metro feeder buses in inner areas was “less viable" due to “under utilisation".

It was then planned that the DMRC feeders buses would be taken up by the Delhi government’s transport department for operations. Late December last year, officials had said that the Delhi government would soon take over the DMRC's fleet of electric buses to strengthen last-mile connectivity.

After this, the Cabinet recently decided to take over 100 existing electric buses of the DMRC and also operate an additional 380 feeder buses under the transport department from April this year.

DMRC has been operating feeder electric buses in east and north clusters since December 2019 from Shastri Park and Majlis Park depots. These buses will be run by the transport department through the Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System (DIMTS).

Six more stations have been identified for the operation of the additional 380 electric buses. These include Welcome, Kohat Enclave, Rithala, Nangloi, Mundka and Dwarka. The depots at these locations will be constructed by the DMRC while the transport department will operate the feeder buses on a per-kilometre basis. Operators will be paid on the basis of the distance covered during the day.

In July last year, DMRC officials had said that the Delhi Metro would soon roll out its first e-auto service in the national capital, with a batch of 50 such vehicles to be launched from Dwarka Sector-9 station.

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