More buses, Metro to meet the rush: Gopal Rai

NEW DELHI: In view of Delhi government's decision to restrict plying of vehicles on alternate days, Transport Minister Gopal Rai today said that the public transport system would be strengthened by introducing more buses and frequency of Metro trains to accomodate the rush.

Rai said the DMRC and Delhi Traffic Police will be approached in this regard and a strategy worked out.

"I have called a meeting with officials from Transport Department, Public Works Department (PWD), Delhi Traffic Police and environment department on how to execute the government's decision," Rai told.

A senior government official said that transport department does not have sufficient staff to execute the new decison on its own and it will approach Traffic Police for cooperation with the government.

Sources in Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) said that it is difficult for the state-owned bus authority to include more buses in its fleet.

The Arvind Kejriwal government yesterday came out with a plan of restricting private vehicles bearing odd and even registration numbers to alternate days from January 1 in the national capital.

"DTC has been trying to buy around 2,000 new buses for alomost two years. We are still trying to buy new buses despite the fact that we recently floated global tenders," they said.

At present, we have a fleet of 4,500 buses, including 1,275 AC-floor buses and 2,500 non-AC floor buses, which is not sufficient to accomodate the increasing numbers of passengers.

Government has also decided to run new buses under Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model to meet shortage of buses in the capital, they also said.

"In view of government's 'Odd and Even formula', government will ask DMRC to increase numbers of train coaches to accomodate crowd of passengers," Rai said.

The Chief Minister had recently written to DMRC managing director Mangu Singh to increase frequency of trains to cater to the growing number of passengers.