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Unbelievable!! Private operators to operate MTC buses in Chennai soon!!
Posted on: 04/Mar/2023 9:05:37 AM
In the future, MTC buses in Chennai would be owned and run by private operators!! Sound`s Unbelievable right!!
Under the Gross Cost Contract or GCC, the MTC or Metropolitan Transport Corporation would add 1000 more buses to its fleet. It is now said that the private operators would own and operate the buses for which they would be paid on a per kilometre basis. This move has made many workers worry and feel unhappy. The officials have mentioned that this move would enhance the number of buses and would improve the efficiency.
The Chennai Corporation would be required to contract buses equivalent to service capacity of 500 buses by 2023 on a performance based cost contract and another 500 buses by 2025. This would be as a part of Chennai Sustainable Urban Services Programme C-SUSP under the World Bank funded CCC orChennai City Partnership.
According to a senior officer belonging to the Transport department, GCC is a public private partnership model. He explained that STUs or state transport undertakings have the responsibility of managing the transport network and collecting the revenue.The operator has the responsibility of procuring, operating and maintaining the buses. He added that the level of service quality to the customers would be taken care of by STUs and operators would be paid per km basis.
It must be taken into note that the service improvement and fleet augmentation would lead to enhanced volume, efficiency and quality of bus service. To select a public bus service operator, tender has been invited to appoint a transaction advisor.
Increase in the number of MTC buses in Chennai would help the passengers as they would have more buses to travel and the efficiency would get better. This was as per Sumana Narayanan, senior researcher, Citizen Consumer and Civic Action group.
She concluded that she did not have any idea regarding whether the MTC buses (when owned and operated by private operators) would provide free travel for the school students, women and differently able persons etc in Chennai. It is important to note that the privately owned town buses in other states do not allow women, students to travel for free.
Information is that currently in Chennai MTC operates as many as 3436 buses on as many as 625 routes and every day 29.5 lakhs plus passengers travel in the MTC buses. There are 20301 employees working. These employees handle MTC bus operations through 31 bus depots in Chennai.
