Fighting Pollution In The Hills: Uttarakhand Government To Buy 500 Electric Buses

The Uttarakhand Transport Corporation (UTC), after the positive feedback it received from the trial run of electric bus on Dehradun-Mussourie route, is planning to add 500 more electric buses to its fleet, Times of India has reported.

The first trial run of the electric bus between Dehradun and Mussourie was flagged off on 9 October by the Chief Minister of Uttarakhand Trivendra Singh Rawat.

General Manager of UTC, Deepak Jain told the paper that the corporation is planning to have a fleet of 500 buses in the next three years.

Jain said that the corporation has been doing the test runs of the electric bus on the 35 km route for 20 days and has not witnessed any problems during this period.

The corporation is also working on expansion of the trial run and now wants to start a new trial rom Haldwani to Nainital. “We will do a trial run on the Nainital-Haldwani route next month.” Jain said.

In the first phase of the plan, 51 buses will be bought by the state while the rest of the 500 buses will be bought by the state in the next three years, Jain said.

“We have around 1,000 buses right now and we want to raise the number to 1,500. All the new buses will be running in Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode,” he said.