NEW DELHI: The CAG report on Delhi’s public transport, not yet tabled in the Assembly, reveals 3.57 lakh bus breakdowns during 2014-2021. That’s 139 instances daily on average. In 70% (2.51 lakh) cases, it took more than 30 minutes to tow the buses away.
The response time for removing these buses ranged from 31 minutes to two hours in 54 percent of cases, between 2-4 hours in 29 percent of cases and over four hours in 17 percent of cases. This reflects an inefficient response recovery mechanism, it points out.
The report says that broken-down DTC buses usually cause road congestion, and the towing delays aggravate the situation. DTC informed (March 2021) that for response delays beyond four hours, maintenance contractors are fined an equivalent of 50 per cent of average ticketed earning per bus per day during the month.
Obviously, “there was no penal provision for not removing broken-down buses from roads in under four hours”, read the report. Prior to May 2017, the broken-down buses were attended to by the respective concessionaires as per their obligation in terms of cluster wise concession agreements.
During April 2015 to March 2017, the response time was beyond 30 minutes in 71 per cent (415 out of 581) instances of breakdown of buses.
After June 2017, DIMTS developed a system of Unified Emergency Response Mechanism for attending to broken-down Cluster buses with alerts from Traffic Control Room of Delhi Police. Recovery vans were to be deployed in 10 locations for prompt recovery.
However, the response time did not improve during April 2017 to 17 December 2020 as the response time was beyond 30 minutes in 79 per cent (774 out of 981) instances of breakdown of buses. However in November 2021, the DoT stated that to improve response recovery time, it had directed for removal of stalled buses by the nearest bus depot.
Further, to facilitate timely removal of stalled buses, a Data Centre was opened where buses are tracked in real time.