‘Shivaee’, MSRTC’s first e-bus service launched on Pune-Ahmednagar route

A charging station was also inaugurated at MSRTC’s Shankarsheth Road headquarters.

At the event attended by Pune city MP Girish Bapat, MLC Nilam Gorhe, MLAs Sunil Tingare and Siddharth Shirole and workers’ union leader Baba Adhav, Pawar said that the Maha Vikas Aghadi government will work on inducting a large number of e-buses to replace the current fleet.

“We discussed the possibility of replacing the current fleet of buses with a new, fresh fleet of e-buses. We will do this no matter how much it costs, we can raise the funds,” he said. “Earlier in the state budget, we had a target of inducting 3,000 new e-buses, but we will go beyond that. I will soon summon a meeting of the finance department for this,” Pawar added. He said that after the proposal is finalised, it will be placed before the chief minister and the state cabinet.

“The ST bus is the poor man’s vehicle and it must continue to serve and march towards its centenary with new vigour,” said Pawar.
The MSRTC plans to operate six daily services between Pune and Ahmednagar with ‘Shivaee’, a 12-metre-long bus with a seating capacity of 43 that can go up to speeds of 80 kmph.

The MSRTC had announced the service in 2019 and had also conducted a trial run between Pune and Mumbai in June 2019. It had announced that the e-buses will operate between destinations that are less than 300 km. The implementation of the project, however, was delayed by over two years – initially due to the slow progress in setting up the infrastructure, and then due to the pandemic and a workers’ strike.

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The MSRTC is one of the biggest state-owned public transport undertakings in the country with a fleet of over 16,000 buses. The loss-making corporation had been ferrying over 65 lakh passengers daily before the outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020.