HYDERABAD: This Dasara could hold more than mere promise for passengers of the State Road Transport Corporation's city region as the corporation has decided to procure nearly 2,000 buses at an estimated cost of Rs. 200 crores. Of these, nearly 700 buses are for the city.

It was also decided to establish eight new bus depots in the city by October this year at a corporation board meeting that was recently held at Bus Bhavan, Musheerabad.

It was a rich haul for the city region to bag nearly 700 buses for the current financial year apart from the construction of new depots at Musheerabad, Hayathnagar, Shamirpet, Bandlaguda, Borabanda, Turkayamjal and Shamshabad.

An exclusive depot for the 75 Volvo buses of the RTC is also proposed at Gowliguda.

RTC Vice-Chairman and Managing Director M. V. Krishna Rao said the decision to procure 2,000 buses and set up eight new bus depots in the city was taken keeping in view the demand for more buses and depots to house and maintain them.

Tenders

However, it was decided to construct the bodies after purchasing the chassis from private manufacturers.

"Now that we have only one Bus Body Building centre at Miyapur, which can produce only 480 bus bodies a year, it was decided to call the private bus body manufacturers for building the rest of 1,520 bus bodies through tenders with a deadline of Dasera this year," he said.

In tune with the procurement, there was also a need to establish or construct new bus depots in the city as the 21 depots were already housing nearly 2,850 buses and to house more buses was not possible. On an average, a bus depot houses 135 buses in the city.

Construction would begin with Musheerabad bus depot, as the Corporation owns enough land there while the rest of the depots will come up wherever land is available.

RTC owns land at the six planned places excepting Borabanda and Shamshabad where it needs to acquire land.

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