UT starts five buses on long routes to Delhi, Ludhiana, Patiala

CHANDIGARH: The UT adviser Manoj Parida on Monday flagged off five heat ventilated air conditioned (HVAC) buses at ISBT in Sector 17. The buses will ply on long routes to Delhi, Ludhiana and Patiala.

Chandigarh Transport Undertaking (CTU) is operating 128 inter-state buses on 51 routes in Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and New Delhi. CTU is in the process of replacing old fleet of ordinary buses with 120 HVAC buses in three lots. The first lot of 40 HVAC buses has been ordered from Tata Motors.

Five HVAC buses have been delivered and were flagged off on Monday. The remaining 35 HVAC buses are likely to be received in the next 10-15 days. The second lot of 40 HVAC is likely to be received within next four to five months.

A senior official of UT administration said that these buses have electronically controlled diesel engines. All buses are equipped with CCTV cameras, LED route boards, and GPS devices for tracking of buses in real time. Each row of seat is equipped with reading lights and mobile charging points. The live location, expected time of arrival, expected time of departure of long route buses can be tracked on CTU bus tracker app, which can be downloaded from Google App Store, he added.

Recently, CTU had launched a service enabling commuters to track long route buses in real time and know the estimated time of arrival (ETA) by using smartphones. CTU had developed mobile application in which automatic vehicle location system (AVLS) and passenger information system (PIS) have been embedded. The commuters will be able to track the movement of buses in real time with frequency of five seconds.

The CTU has a fleet of around 500 buses, which are operating from four depots. Of them, 400 buses are plying on intercity routes and the remaining are on long routes.