CRUT to refurbish 89 old buses soon

Bhubaneswar:  While the Capital Region Urban Transport (CRUT) is planning to transform the urban mobility scenario with a fleet of new buses, the transport company’s Board of Directors on Thursday decided to refurbish the old fleet of buses so that the old vehicles would don new looks.

CRUT, city’s new special purpose vehicle (SPV) for transport, in its Board meeting, decided to refurbish and make 89 buses from its old fleet, look again new and colourful. In fact, CRUT currently has 110 old buses running on the road. However, the majority are looking damaged and are with a serious need for revamping.

A senior CRUT official said out of the 89 old buses, there would be 59 standard buses with sitting capacity of 43 passengers and 30 midi buses with sitting capacity of 28 passengers respectively.

Sources also said that while CRUT is going to run city buses through two different packages, Package-I and Package-II.

The refurbishing of 89 buses from its old fleet of buses would be called as Package-III. The refurbishing of old buses will be done in phases within six months time from the commencement of work.

It can be mentioned here that the decision was taken today at the 34^th Board of Directors’ meeting of CRUT inside the Secretariat. CRUT, which was formed this year, was earlier called Bhubaneswar Puri Transport Services (BPTS). Earlier, the company was known as Bhubaneswar Puri Transport Services Limited (BPTSL).

Yesterday, CRUT received 29 midi buses from the manufacturer Ashok Leyland. The buses are currently with the depot of the manufacturer and later would be brought to the CRUT bus depot at Bhagabanpur on the backside of the plotting scheme of the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA), K-9. Once the buses reach the CRUT bus depot, the branding will be done on them.

A senior CRUT official said “By Friday, the manufacturer is likely to provide additional 56 new midi buses so that the new fleet will have 85 buses. As the entire city is going to have around 200 buses, 100 will be provided by Ashok Leyland the rest 100 will be provided by another leading bus manufacturer Tata Motors. ”

“The city bus service project with the new buses will become operational before World Cup Hockey,” the CRUT official added.