4 new AC buses for city commuters

Sambad English Bureau Published On : May 2, 2014 at 2:02 PM Updated On : May 2, 2014 at 3:43 PM

Reported by Santosh Jagdev
Bhubaneswar, May 2:

To make city bus-ride comfortable for passengers during high summer, four air-conditioned buses were launched on Friday in Odisha’s capital city of Bhubaneswar that has been experiencing high temperature levels above 41 degree Celsius for over a week now.

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“ Today we have launched four AC buses that will cover the Airport-Master Canteen-Acharya Vihar- KIIT Campus- Nandankanan.route.The minimum price of tickets is Rs 16 for first 3 kms and an additional charge of Rs 2 per every extra km will be levied thereafter,” informed Chief Executive Officer of Dream Team Sahara (DTS) Sudhansu Jena.

For the convenience of all travelers, the buses have both high and low floors. The low floor part will help the elderly and physically challenged people. Each bus has the capacity to seat 35 passengers, Jena said.

DTS is the project partner of the Bhubaneswar Municipality Corporation’s (BMC) city bus service in the state capital and operates with 125 buses at its command..
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The BMC has procured 12 AC buses which will ply in phases on three routes – Airport to Nandankanan, Bhubaneswar to Cuttack and Bhubaneswar to Puri, The buses have been supplied by a Lucknow-based firm and each of these are equipped with CCTV cameras and GPS monitoring system…

The chairman of the Dream Team Sahara Nishikanta Mishra said in the first phase, the four AC city buses in the city would run from Biju Patnaik Airport to Nandankanan via KIIT in route no-207-A. These four intra-city AC buses would run from 7.30 AM to 9 PM every day.

He, however, said there has been slight change in the route for the non-AC buses.

The non-AC buses would start their journey from the Airport to Nandankanan via KIIT. However, while returning from Nandankanan, the buses would come via Master Canteen through Acharya Vihar.

The timing of these non-AC buses would be from 7.30 AM to 9 PM.

“In the second phase, we have decided to run four AC city buses in route no-171 from Bhubaneswar to Puri. These buses would begin their journey from Baramunda bus stand to Puri via Master Canteen within May 7. Besides, we would also run four AC buses from CDA Sector in Cuttack to Bhubaneswar in route no-141”, Mishra said,

The state government recently sanctioned Rs 20 crore to H&UD department for the AC buses. Each bus costs around Rs 40 lakh, sources informed.