GURUGRAM: The city bus
service, which is officially named Gurugaman, is likely to be rolled out with a fleet of 25 non-AC buses in the next fortnight or so as part of a long-waited project to improve Gurugram’s crippled public transport system.
Officials of Gurugram Development Authority (GMDA) claimed the 25 buses were ready to hit the roads on
Independence Day.
“We hope to launch the
bus service on August 15. While the buses are ready, there are some challenges with regard to a cashless, paperless ticketing system that we plan to launch simultaneously,” GMDA CEO V Umashankar told TOI.
Umashankar, however, added the launch of the bus service might be pushed back by a couple of days in case of any delay in the integration of banking system with in-bus computers for the ticketing system, which, he claimed, would be the first-of-its-kind in the country. ‘We have the option of starting with electronic tickets and cash payments. But we want to start this new system from Day One itself. Because, once people get used to paper tickets, they will not easily shift to electronic ones.”
Elaborating further, the GMDA CEO said the service would be available on one route initially.
“The sequence of stoppages will be announced at a later stage, along with the fare structure. The fare policy has been approved by the state government and we have received all necessary permits and clearances for the service,” he added.
According to GMDA officials, all the buses will be equipped with CCTV cameras, GPS and panic buttons for monitoring and safety purposes. In future, when the city gets an optical fibre network, the buses will also have
Wi-Fi connectivity. “We will also have customer service agents (CSA) on board these buses, apart from the drivers,” Umashankar said. Besides, a mobile application has already been readied and it will be made public soon.
As per the plan, the first 200 vehicles will be non-AC while the next 100 will be electric-run AC. The work on building bus queue shelters has been gaining pace and 150 out of proposed 453 shelters are fully ready.
“The shelter in Sector 10 will be opened first. However, we are facing some problem at 50-odd proposed sites. In areas, where roads are being widened, for example the stretch between Hero Honda Chowk and Umang Bhardwaj Chowk, we will construct the shelters only after the road work is complete,” said Umashankar.
