THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Transport Department has given KSRTC the nod to buy 360 new buses that run on clean energy. As many as 50 electric fast passenger buses and 310 super fast buses running on Compressed Natural Gas will be bought for `286.5 crore. Transport Minister A K Saseendran said the purchase of the buses is part of making Thiruvananthapuram a green city.
According to him, all KSRTC buses operating in Thiruvananthapuram will be either converted into electric, CNG or LNG within three years. The first LNG pump has begun functioning at Anayara here. A study is under way by the Indian Oil Corporation to set up more such pumps. IOC sells LNG at `44 and CNG at `57.3 a kg. The move to buy buses running on clean energy comes at a time when the price of diesel touched `71 per litre, thereby saving fuel cost by 30 per cent.
KSRTC will get `27.5 crore as subsidy for buying 50 electric buses under the Central government’s Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles (FAME-2) project. Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board (KIIFB) will provide `259 crore at an interest of 4% to buy the remaining buses. Though KSRTC has close to 6,000 buses in its fleet, it operates only over a thousand buses due to the Covid-19 situation. It will also convert some of the existing diesel-engine buses into LNG buses.