VIJAYAWADA: The Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) has written a letter to the State government seeking permission to invite tenders for buying electric buses. The battery cost for the electric buses is less now, compared to the prices in 2019. Moreover, the electric buses will lower greenhouse gas emissions.
APSRTC executive director (Engineering) P Krishna Mohan told TNIE that Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD) Executive Officer (EO) KS Jawahar Reddy has written a letter recently to the corporation urging it to operate 150 electric buses between Tirupati and Tirumala to transform the hill shrine into a ‘zero carbon emission zone’.
“After the TTD request, we have submitted three proposals to the State government. As per the plan, in the first phase, 150 electric buses will be introduced between Tirupati-Tirumala. The second proposal is to add 350 electric buses into the RTC fleet and the third proposal is to run 100 e-buses each in Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam,” Krishna Mohan explained.
“We expect a positive response from the government by the month-end. After that, discussions will be held to review the technical specifications and designs of the buses submitted by various manufacturers. After examining them, tenders will be invited by February second week,” the executive director added.
Official sources said that in 2019, the RTC had decided to introduce electric buses in its fleet as the fuel prices have reached an all-time high.
A report has been submitted to the Department of Heavy Industries of the Union government seeking its approval for procuring 1,000 electric buses under the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid) Electric Vehicles FAME-II, and incentive to the APSRTC for the same. An expert committee constituted by the RTC suggested possible ways to replace the diesel buses with the eco-friendly buses. A report prepared by the committee, after a three-month study, was submitted to Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy in September 2019.
However, the issue landed on the table of the Judicial Preview Committee, which was appointed by the State government to vet the tenders for infrastructure projects worth above Rs 100 crore. The Judicial Preview Committee had observed that there was no necessity for the APSRTC to introduce electric buses. It also expressed its objection to the Gross Cost Control method adopted by the corporation for tendering procedure by inviting Request For Proposal (RFP) from manufacturers. Instead of procuring electric buses, the RTC should focus on purchasing diesel buses of BS-IV or VI model buses as the air quality is not below the prescribed standards anywhere in AP, it had said.