BHUBANESWAR: The first trial run of an electric bus was carried out by Capital Region Urban Transport (CRUT) in the city on Saturday.
The demo run was conducted as part of CRUT’s plan to induct 50 electric buses to its existing fleet of Mo Bus to reduce carbon footprint and give push to clean mobility in public transport system.
Officials of CRUT, who had invited bid in this regard last month, said trial operations of e-bus on the first day was carried out on Master Canteen-Khurda route by Olectra-BYD.
The firm will conduct demo run of its buses for next 10 days, after which other bidders will be asked to conduct trial run of their e-buses on city routes in a phased manner.
After completion of the technical evaluation, the bid will be opened. Winner of the bid will provide the electric buses.
The entire process will take at least six months, they added. To facilitate trail run of these buses, the Central Electricity Supply Utility (CESU) has facilitated a temporary charging station near Janta Maidan here.
This year, the Centre has approved 50 electric buses for the city under the second phase of Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles scheme.
CRUT officials said plying of these zero carbon emission e-buses will promote green transport in the city. Besides, the e-buses will not cause any noise pollution.
The buses will have air conditioning vents, USB charging points adjacent to every seat and three cameras for security purpose.
The CRUT has identified 38.7 km Priority Transit Corridors in the Capital which will require 148 electric buses to move around 1.92 lakh passengers on a daily basis in near future.