The Hindu : New Delhi News : Blueline phase-out from May 2009

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Blueline phase-out from May 2009

Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar

All 2,700 of them to go by March 2010, promises Delhi’s new Transport Minister

‘A hundred Blueline buses would be phased out every month’
‘More DTC buses to be inducted to meet the needs of the city’

NEW DELHI: After making a name for himself as Education Minister, Arvinder Singh Lovely is now keen to rid Delhi of the menace of Blueline buses and has made their phase-out his “first priority” on taking over charge of the Transport portfolio.

“Soon after taking over charge of the Transport Department, I had convened a meeting of senior officials on December 23 and have prepared a phase-out schedule for the Blueline buses,” said the Minister on Friday.

“As per the plan of action, from April 2009 onward or the first week of May 2009, a hundred Blueline buses would be phased out every month. To ensure that people do not suffer from their absence, we have advanced the induction of more Delhi Transport Corporation buses from July 2009 to April 2009 and they would keep coming in regularly to match the phase-out of the Bluelines,” he added.

In this manner, said Mr. Lovely, by March 2010 all the 2,700 Blueline buses would be taken off the Capital’s roads. So by the time Delhi hosts the Commonwealth Games in 2010, these killer buses would have been a thing of the past and only the low-floor and new passenger-friendly buses would be operating in the city.

The Minister said the idea behind induction of more DTC buses was also to ensure that by the time the Bluelines go away, there are 5,500 DTC buses on the roads. “We have a total of these many buses in Delhi at the moment and so the DTC on its own would be able to meet the needs of the city.”

As for bringing in new private buses under the cooperative or corporate model, Mr. Lovely said the process was running parallel and he would be focusing on that too.

The demand for changing the model under which the private buses operate was first raised in June-July last year when the Blueline buses were involved in a spate of fatal accidents. It was then that Delhi Government had first declared that big cooperatives and corporate houses would be invited to operate a minimum of 100 buses each on selected routes.

But thereafter, while the Bluelines continued to claim over a hundred precious human lives each year, the process lost steam and till date not one of these buses has come in. BJP leader Vijay Kumar Malhotra charged a few days ago that Congress leaders had a vested interest in the operation of Blueline buses and this is what was keeping them from phasing those out. With these buses claiming nearly a dozen more lives since the new government took charge this past week, the demands for a speedy phase-out are again growing shriller. What has given more credence to the efforts to phase out the Bluelines now is that even Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit went on record on Friday stating that the permits have been given to these buses to ply and help people commute and not kill or injure them.

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