Gurgaon bus service by March 2018, says MCG commissioner

The commissioner of the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG), V Umashankar, said on Thursday that a bus service will be launched in Gurgaon by March 2018. He made the announcement while speaking at a seminar on air pollution and implementing a graded action plan to mitigate pollution.

It was pointed out in the seminar that the city’s transport infrastructure system is struggling to keep up with the increasing demand and the rise in private vehicles over the years has affected the city’s air quality.

“We are working on a sustainable mobility project as we are aware that traffic congestion is one of the causes of air pollution that can be controlled by strengthening the public transport system. We will launch the CNG-enabled city bus service by the first quarter of 2018. We are also planning to get electric buses. We are, however, waiting for the Government of India scheme related to electric buses to be notified,” Umashankar said.

The MCG will also plan charging stations for the buses before the service is launched in the city, he said.

In the seminar, KK Khandelwal, additional chief secretary (environment), Haryana, suggested that apart from regular buses, solar-powered buses can also be an option for the city.

It was also highlighted that the city suffers from poor air quality as it has high vehicle concentration. Only 17% of the city’s population uses public transport and around 50,000 vehicles are added to the city’s roads every year, according to a study by the Centre of Science and Environment (CSE).

“The number of cars entering the city from Delhi daily is thrice the total number of cars registered in Gurgaon in 2015. In addition, as many as 900 trucks cross the city every day, which also affects pollution levels,” said Dr Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director of research and advocacy and head of the air pollution and clean transportation programme, CSE. She was also present at the seminar.

Earlier, on Tuesday, the state’s urban local bodies minister Kavita Jain had declared in Poland that the state government will introduce 75 to 100 electric buses in Gurgaon.

On May 9, the MCG and the proposed Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Delhi Integrated Multimodal Transit System Limited as the GMDA aims to buy 500 CNG buses to ply across Delhi-NCR. On December 20 last year, DS Dhesi, the chief secretary of Haryana, had announced that the GMDA would purchase these 500 buses.