MSRTC issues tenders for LNG and wet lease buses

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The Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation on Tuesday invited bids for hiring 500 ordinary buses as well as conversion of diesel buses into ones that run on Liquefied Natural Gas, an official said.

The official said it was the first time the state undertaking was hiring ordinary buses, which would be taken on the wet lease model, with the vehicle maintenance and driver expenses being borne by the contractor. Shekhar Channe, vice chairperson and managing director of MSRTC, told PTI the aim was to bring down the operating cost of buses, especially as operations had been severely hit by the Covid-19 pandemic.

"They will be hired on per kilometre basis on wet lease and MSRTC will provide diesel. We want to increase our market share and this can be done by adding more buses to our fleet. Since we cannot buy them due to rise in fixed costs, we are hiring them. However, our own fleet size will not come down while we hire," he said. Channe said MSRTC would get their diesel buses retrofitted with LNG kits, with firms that come forward expected to install dispensing units and take care of maintenance, and they would be paid on a per kilometre basis.

MSRTC officials said a bus with a full load of LNG can cover a distance of 600-700 kilometres against 200 kilometres for those operating on Compressed Natural Gas. Channe also informed that the undertaking would convert 1,000 buses into CNG ones, apart from purchase of 700 buses, tenders for which would also be issued soon. MSRTC, with a fleet of 16,000 passenger buses and some one lakh employees, used to ferry 65 lakh people per day, before curtailment of operations due to the pandemic brought the ridership down to 17-18 lakh and on-road buses to around 10,000. Its losses before the pandemic were in the range of Rs 4,500 crore, which has increased considerably now.

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