 |
| City buses in Bhubaneswar. Telegraph picture |
Bhubaneswar, Nov. 6: The housing and urban development department has decided to connect Argul, the site of the permanent campus of IIT, from Master Canteen Square through city buses.
Earlier, the department brought the All India Institute of Medical Sciences within the network of city bus route.
The department has also decided to increase the frequency of city buses on important routes. For this purpose, the department has procured a fleet of 33 buses.
Bhubaneswar Puri Transport Service Limited, which manages the city bus service, recently finalised the new routes along with a number of additional buses on specific routes.
An official in the department said the buses were purchased at a cost of Rs 18 crore. “With additional buses, the frequency of the service will be increased. The buses will hit the streets within a month,” said special secretary of the department S.K Ratho.
Apart from the Master Canteen-Argul route, the buses will also ply on a new route between Puri and Konark.
While 10 new buses will ply between Master Canteen Square and Argul via Sunderpada, five buses will ply on the Konark-Puri route.
At present, 125 city buses ply on various routes connecting Bhubaneswar to Cuttack, Khurda and Puri.
Around 97 buses ply in Bhubaneswar only. While the bus strength on the VSS Nagar-Dumduma route has been increased to 13 from 10, three more buses will ply on Khurda-Master Cateen route, where 10 buses run.
The bus strength of Lingaraj-Ghatikia route will also be increased from 10 to 11. The GGP Colony-Mayfair Hotel route will now have six buses instead of five. The Kalpana Square-KIIT route will have six additional buses.
“This is a welcome step by the government. Once additional buses start plying, we will not have to wait for the buses for long as the frequency will increase,” said Ketan Das, a passenger.