TSRTC electric bus move hits roadblock

  Hyderabad: The Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC) has received only five bids for the tenders which it had called for operating electric buses on city roads.

The Corporation had recently called tenders for operating 40 electric buses in the city in the first phase, and 60 more buses in the second phase. The Central government, which in its budget announced of providing subsidy to electric buses, had proposed to provide 50 per cent of the cost of the bus.

According to official sources, the Corporation had received only five bidders in this regard. According to RTC officials, the bidders include Ashok Leyland, Tata Motors, Gold Stone, Hyundai and another e-bus manufacturing company from England. 

As per the tender notice, the selected operators should provide buses with driver, insurance besides taking up maintenance, while the Corporation would carry out fare collection besides operating the buses on TSRTC scheduled routes. The selected operators would be paid on contract rate per kilometres basis based on the distance travelled by each bus.

It may be recalled that the Corporation had recently operated battery-enabled electric bus on the Shamshabad Airport stretch on an experimental basis for a period of one month, with the help of a company that manufactured the electric bus. The officials operated the bus from Rajiv Gandhi International Airport to (RGIA) in Shamshabad to Secunderabad for few weeks to check the efficiency. They officials found that the experience was encouraging.

According to sources, the cost of the bus, which is over Rs 2.50 crore, is said to be the main reason for the poor response from bidders. A normal A/C bus would cost Rs 1 crore to Rs 1.2 crore. The officials said that there may be very less number of players in terms of having a bigger fleet of the electric buses. 

They further added that as per the tenders, the operator should have to supply 40 buses to the Corporation in the first phase. The decision about the second phase would be decided after knowing the response from the commuters, officials added.