By IANS,
New Delhi : The Delhi cabinet Monday cleared the proposal for the start of corporatization of the city’s private bus service in order to phase out the bluelines.
“At present in Delhi, the blueline buses are run by individual operators who have either a number of buses or a single bus. Under the new scheme Delhi has been divided into 17 clusters. A cluster is a group of bus routes chosen on the basis of topography and traffic surveys to make it financially viable for the private operators,” said a transport department official.
“Every cluster would be run by a single operator only which would be selected by a bidding process. The revenue collected from the buses would go to the government and the operator will be paid on kilometer basis (Rs.47.50 per kilometer),” the official added.
“The new model would make the bus system more commuter friendly and cases of over charging, misbehaving (with passengers) will certainly go down.”
While briefing media after the cabinet meeting where the decision was approved, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said: “It has been decided to award the contract for operation of private stage carriage services for cluster I in Delhi in accordance with the Request for Proposal (RFP) documents to Star Bus Services private limited.”
The chief minister expressed confidence that this will help in ensuring a reliable public transport system across Delhi.
“Further it was decided that this process will be implemented for other 16 remaining clusters in new scheme for operation of private stage carriage buses through corporate entities to replace the existing blue-line buses run by individual operators,” said an official statement.
“The transport department has also been authorised to issue Request for Qualification (RFQ) and RFP for remaining 16 clusters. The cabinet has also approved provision of funds for revenue expenditure gap funding of the private stage carriage operations and the method of execution,” the statement added.
As per the Delhi government’s plan, the blueline buses will be phased out by March 2010.