As a New Year gift for the citizens of Delhi, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday flagged off 50 new low floor electric buses from Rajghat DTC Depot.
Talking about the development, Kejriwal said, “I welcome all the people of Delhi in this new era of a pollution free, secure and high-tech Delhi.”
He called it a matter of great happiness that 50 new electric buses are being inducted into Delhi’s bus fleet today.
With this, Delhi now boasts of 300 electric buses that have been procured within a short span of time, Kejriwal said.
“With the induction of 50 new Electric buses today, Delhi now has 7379 buses under its city bus transportation fleet. This includes 4060 buses being operated under Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) and 3319 buses being operated under DIMTS (Delhi Integrated Multimodal Transit Systems). This is the highest ever number of buses in Delhi’s fleet,” he said.
The Delhi Chief Minister said today’s induction will take the number of total electric buses to 300.
He said the Delhi Government has recently started the process of taking over the operations of 100 Electric Feeder Buses of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) and plan to operate a total of 480 Feeder buses in the city in 2023.
“This means we already have 400 e-buses in Delhi, with 100 plying on metro feeder routes. Mumbai has 406 e-buses, the highest in the country. We have 6 buses behind them but we’ll be far ahead of them very soon,” the Delhi Chief Minister said.
He said, “In this coming year itself, we will procure another 1,500 e-buses. So with the already existing 300 DTC e-buses, and the DMRC’s incoming 480, Delhi will have 2,280 e-buses by the end of this year.”
Kejriwal said Delhi will further see rapid induction of electric buses in its city transportation fleet.
He said 6380 additional electric buses will be procured by the government by 2025.
“By the end of 2025, total bus fleet size would be 10,480 which will comprise 8,280 electric buses, nearly 80% of the total fleet size. Delhi Government is also undertaking rapid electrification of bus depots for housing these buses,” he said.
“The electrification of 56 bus depots has been targeted for now. We are spending almost 1500 crores on the electrification of these bus depots. 3 depots are already electrified, 17 more to be electrified by June 2023 and 36 by December 2023,” the Delhi Chief Minister said.
Delhi Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot and senior officers of Delhi Transport Corporation and other dignitaries were also present on the occasion.
All these electric buses will run from Rohini Sector 37 Bus Depot and will ply on seven different routes of Delhi.
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