Cuttack, Feb. 4: Your wait for buses will be less tiring as the municipal corporation has planned to built 52 passenger sheds across the city.

The sheds, which will come up at the designated bus stops, will not be mere facilities to protect commuters from the sun and rain. Apart from seating arrangements, these passenger sheds will be equipped with kiosks and display screens for messages.

The Cuttack Municipal Corporation will develop the sheds on build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis. It will have a five-year contract with the private operator.

"The tender has already been finalised. The contract will be awarded to the private operator by next week," municipal commissioner Gyana Das told The Telegraph today.

According to the provisions of the BOT model, the private operator will develop the passenger shades within two months from the date of award of the contract. The operator will also be responsible for the maintenance of the sheds.

"They will build, operate and maintain the passenger shelters for five years and then transfer it to the corporation," Das said.

But during these five years, the contractor will have sole and exclusive advertisement rights at these facilities. However, it will have to pay annual advertisement tax and licence fees to the corporation according to the rate determined by the municipal council.

"The sheds are not only for the comfort of city bus commuters. Those planned at Badambadi and Link Road near the present bus terminus will also serve those commuting on other routes," said Bikash Ranjan Behera, head of the corporations standing committee for licence and appeal.

The corporation has recently created the Cuttack Urban Transport Service Limited (CUTSL), a special-purpose vehicle with the municipal commissioner as its chief executive officer to run a city bus service with a fleet of 50 vehicles in the first phase. The state housing and urban development department will provide the buses.

In another development, the CUTSL had invited tenders, along with requests for proposal, to engage organisations for operation of the city bus service on public-private partnership (PPP) mode. Two responses have so far been received. Both the bids were sent to the government last month.

An official source said that the CUTSL would shortly award the contract for operation of the city bus service. The state transport department has already approved 10 routes with two buses every hour between Cuttack and Choudwar and two to three buses every hour on other routes within the city.

"Passenger sheds are a much needed civic requirement," said Satyajit Roy, a resident of Bidanasi.

In 2011, the corporation had come up with passenger sheds at 11 locations across the city on BOT basis.

Cuttack is yet to have an organised public transport system of its own. The Bhubaneswar-Puri Transport Service Limited run the bus service in the city under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. The agency also runs the service in Bhubaneswar and Puri. However, private operators run buses on three routes in Cuttack. However, their fleet size is less than 20.