Cuttack, July 13: The municipal corporation is set to engage an operator to run a fleet of 100 city buses.

The corporation has created Cuttack Urban Transport Service (CUTSL), a special purpose vehicle, to manage the city bus service.

With the municipal commissioner as the chief executive officer, the CUTSL has planned to "to provide connectivity to all the important centres of the city".

Officials in the corporation said the CUTSL had invited tenders along with a request "to engage entities and organisations for operation of the city bus service" and two responses have been received.

"A decision on the responses will be taken shortly to engage the operator for the city bus service covering the Cuttack Development Plan Area of 320sqkm," CUTSL chief executive officer (CEO) Gyana Das told The Telegraph today.

Cuttack Development Plan Area consists of 59 wards under Cuttack Municipal Corporation, 19 wards of Choudwar Municipality and 60 villages.

The existing city bus service is managed by the Bhubaneswar Puri Transport Service Limited under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) scheme in Bhuba-neswar, Puri and Cuttack.

"The existing city bus routes only cover Badambadi-Ring Road-high court-Deula Sahi-Sati Chaura-Bidanasi-Biju Patnaik Park (Route 1), Badambadi-Ring Road-CDA (Route 2) and Badambadi-Link Road-OMP Square-railway station-College Square-Ranihat-Manglabag-Cantonment Road-Barabati Stadium (Route 3)," said Chittaranjan Mohanty, a social activist and resident of Markatnagar.

Das said: "The city bus service under CUTSL will offer connectivity to Cuttack and Choudwar and nearby towns."

CUTSL has identified 10 routes to cover both Cuttack and Choudwar. The routes have been chosen to provide connectivity to important centres of the city such as the railway station, Matagajpur, Nuapada, Nirgundi, Charbatia, Choudwar and Badambadi.

While three to four buses every hour are planned for the intra-city routes, two buses every hour have been planned on the inter-city routes.

CUTSL will engage the private operator to operate buses on the 10 routes for a period of seven years with 72 bus stoppages where bus shelters will be constructed in public-private-partnership (PPP) mode.

"The contract would be on operation and maintenance basis where the selected private operator will have to incur all the expenses in connection, including payment of all applicable taxes. In return for this, the operator would be allowed to collect and retain appropriate fares from the passengers as notified by us," the Das said.

"The operator will be allowed to utilise the advertisement space on the buses and on the bus stands, but will be required to share the revenues earned," he said, adding that CUTSL will start off with a fleet of 50 buses that will be procured with central government funds under JNNRUM.

"It's good that the absence of an organised public transport (city bus) system in Cuttack has been taken up seriously by the civic administration," said Amlan Badan Pattanaik, a resident of Rajabagicha Labour colony.