Chennai: Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay on Tuesday flagged off 250 new buses procured at ₹290 crore for Metropolitan Transport Corporation and Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation.Of the 250 buses, 130 are low-floor AC electric buses for the city. These buses are manufactured by Switch, an electric vehicle subsidary of Ashok Leyland.Tuesday’s launch of buses is part of a larger plan to operate 750 new low-floor AC e-buses through seven depots at an estimated cost of ₹1,337 crore. In this, the first batch of 130 buses was launched at a cost of ₹234.5 crore.State transport corporations are also set to induct 1,614 new buses at an estimated cost of ₹756 crore. For the SETC, 120 new buses were launched on Tuesday for ₹55.58 crore.MTC is already operating 625 low-floor e-buses procured at a cost of ₹697 crore through five depots to reduce vehicular pollution. It will operate the new ones from Alandur and Central depot. These buses will ply in areas such as Kilambakkam, Siruseri IT Park, Adyar, Guindy, Siruseri, Velachery, Chengalpet and Mamallapuram.Transport minister A Vijay Tamilan Parthiban said the govt plans to procure only AC buses moving forward as directed by the chief minister.The govt also has plans to revive AC double-decker buses on routes where they plied nearly two decades ago. Switch has been testing a few models on public roads, but these were part of their operational testing and not carried out by MTC. Officials said they would float separate tenders and finalise the operators.
