The Mysuru City division of the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) has taken up an ambitious project of refurbishing a few old buses its fleet for improving their efficiency.
As many as 25 existing buses that have run about four to five lakh km have been identified for refurbishing and two among them have already been refurbished, making them look “brand new” with a fresh coat of paint. Out of two refurbished buses, one is being operated on an intra-city route.
Importantly, the refurbishing work is being done by the workshop staff of KSRTC in Mysuru and each bus takes around 15-20 days for refurbishment. The cost of refurbishment of each bus is around ₹4 to ₹5 lakh.
Mysuru City KSRTC Divisional Controller Veeresh H.T. told The Hindu that though the project is around two years old, the KSRTC city division, which was bifurcated from the Mysuru KSRTC Rural division, took up refurbishment work since January this year. “We target to redo 25 buses this year. This is going to improve the buses’ efficiency and also their performance,” he added.
Since COVID-19, the scrapping age of buses had been prolonged from nine years to 15 years irrespective of the number of km covered.
Rusting of platforms, body and other parts, and damage to the structure of the buses are attended to, going into every detail of the bus so that they come out of the workshop brand new. Mr. Veeresh said over 1,000 KSRTC buses had been refurbished since last year in the State.
Recently, 50 new buses have been added to the fleet of the Mysuru city division of KSRTC to cater to the student community post the launch of Shakti scheme for women.
The new buses are equipped with features such as vehicle location tracking device, cameras, and emergency panic button. The BS-6 buses will be linked to the command centre that is being planned for tracking the movement of buses.
With the launch of Shakti scheme, passenger load in KSRTC buses in Mysuru city has gone up substantially. Authorities had sought additional buses to handle the increase in passenger traffic. Almost all buses operated by the division were running full, and some were exceeding their carrying capacity to deal with the rush of passengers, especially women.
The Mysuru division had sought 120 extra buses from the central office for augmenting the existing fleet and to ease the pressure on available resources. The division got 50 buses.
