BENGALURU: As many as 70 new buses were launched by the KSRTC on Monday as part of the first phase of 380 Karnataka Sarige buses.
Speaking to reporters after the inauguration, Transport minister Ramalinga Reddy said, 1,594 new KSRTC buses will be inducted by March 2017.
“We will launch the remaining 310 Sarige buses by November this year,” he said.
“We are planning to replace aged buses by March this year. These new Volvo-Eicher buses are mainly for rural areas in the state. It also has a fuel efficiency of 5.8 KMPL (Kilometres Obtain per litre of high speed diesel), which is higher than other buses,” said Reddy. He said they will implement BS-VI norms for its buses by 2020 in a phased manner.
Apart from this, KSRTC is planning to introduce seven new flybuses buses directly from Bengaluru International Airport to Tirupati, Madikeri and Salem. At present, Bengaluru-Mysuru (five buses) and Bengaluru-Kundapur(two buses) are operating. It has also decided to install CCTV cameras in all depots, bus stations, regional workshops and divisional workshops to bring transparency.
At present, four state road transport corporations are providing public transport services to 23,793 villages and catering to about 1.25 crore passengers with the help of 23,700 buses and 1.17 lakh man power.