Gearing up to introduce the service of battery operated rickshaws in several routes of the Capital City besides the existing old ones, the new permit holders will be allowed to ferry passengers on the designated routes from January 1.
As many as 987 permits have been distributed this year which will be valid up till December 31, 2018. The officials of Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) have completed the task of distributing route passes to the e-rickshaw drivers a few days back.
“This time for one year, the Municipal Corporation has distributed the permits. After completing the distribution process through lottery system, other major documentation work at present is getting accomplished. From December 15 onwards, distribution of logo for each route will be initiated. Also, we have ensured that the route passes are distributed evenly covering the designated routes,” said City Manager Saurabh Kumar who heads Transportation Cell of the Municipal Corporation.
Following the zone wise division plan for plying e-rickshaws, Kumar assured that the expansion of routes for operation of battery operated rickshaws will not hamper the traffic management of the Capital City. “Though a few busy routes have been included in the list this year but enforcement team will keep a tab on the violators and will conduct regular drives. Besides, restricting the limit of e-rickshaws at MG Road from 100 to 60 now, similar strategy has been adopted for the other routes as well,” Kumar added
According to the new plan, the Civic Body has considered five zones for which the route passes have been given to the drivers. Booty More area that covers four routes have been selected in zone one while in zone two and zone three which includes the busiest MG Road and Harmu as many as eight routes have been finalized there. Similarly, zone four which includes Namkum area and zone five which covers Dhurwa around five and four routes respectively have been figured out here.
Meanwhile, the Municipal Corporation has begun the task of maintaining the record of all types of public transportation modes. By far, there is no official record about the number of e-rickshaws, auto-rickshaws which is a major hurdle in clearing the growing traffic chaos. All measures in the past had proved futile to limit the penetration of extra number of e-rickshaws at the major locations.
“The exercise for keeping the records of different modes of public transportation has been started. Besides keeping the record of auto-rickshaws, e-rickshaws, now the officials will also keep the record of cycle rickshaws plying on different routes. The survey has been started in association with a private agency,” he further added.