Agra to launch 115 CNG buses in two phases
Vishal Sharma
New Delhi/ Agra. Coming close on the heels of the launch of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG)-based bus service in Lucknow and Kanpur, the UP State Road Transport Corporation’s CNG City Bus Service was formally inaugurated by the state’s transport minister Naresh Agarwal in Agra on Thursday.
Though the UPSRTC had already begun operations of the bus service in the city about a fortnight back, the service was formally declared operational on Thursday by the minister, who said initially, the UPSRTC would introduce 15 CNG buses in the city and in the second phase, this number would be augmented with 100 more buses, completely shifting the city's public transport system on CNG instead of diesel.
He said the UPSRTC had earned a profit of Rs 40 crore last year and it was going utilise this profit to introduce 1,200 new buses in the entire state to replace the older buses.
Notably, being located in the environmentally sensitive Taj Trapezium Zone, the UP government has already decreed that the commercial vehicles operating in the 50 km radius around the Taj Mahal will be transformed into cleaner fuels like CNG, LPG and electricity.
Consequently, hundreds of diesel/petrol auto-rickshaws operating in the city have been outlawed by the local administration, which has asked the auto-rickshaw owners to either purchase new CNG/LPG autos or install approved CNG conversion kits in the existing vehicles, creating a panic among the petrol and diesel auto-owners who are now rushing to buy CNG kits for their autos.
Similarly, school buses operating in the city too have been asked to be converted into CNG with the administration adapting a “greener” approach towards the environment.
Local transport officials indicated that soon, the entry of diesel-based commercial vehicles into the city could be banned to prevent the vehicles from further degrading the city's environment.
They claimed that the new bus service will also directly link the Taj Mahal to the Akbar's Mausoleum of Sikandra at the Agra-Delhi Highway, operating on a circuit designed to facilitate the tourists arriving in diesel buses from Delhi, apart from other tourist-centric routes like Fatehpur Sikri.
New Delhi/ Agra. Coming close on the heels of the launch of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG)-based bus service in Lucknow and Kanpur, the UP State Road Transport Corporation’s CNG City Bus Service was formally inaugurated by the state’s transport minister Naresh Agarwal in Agra on Thursday.
Though the UPSRTC had already begun operations of the bus service in the city about a fortnight back, the service was formally declared operational on Thursday by the minister, who said initially, the UPSRTC would introduce 15 CNG buses in the city and in the second phase, this number would be augmented with 100 more buses, completely shifting the city's public transport system on CNG instead of diesel.
He said the UPSRTC had earned a profit of Rs 40 crore last year and it was going utilise this profit to introduce 1,200 new buses in the entire state to replace the older buses.
Notably, being located in the environmentally sensitive Taj Trapezium Zone, the UP government has already decreed that the commercial vehicles operating in the 50 km radius around the Taj Mahal will be transformed into cleaner fuels like CNG, LPG and electricity.
Consequently, hundreds of diesel/petrol auto-rickshaws operating in the city have been outlawed by the local administration, which has asked the auto-rickshaw owners to either purchase new CNG/LPG autos or install approved CNG conversion kits in the existing vehicles, creating a panic among the petrol and diesel auto-owners who are now rushing to buy CNG kits for their autos.
Similarly, school buses operating in the city too have been asked to be converted into CNG with the administration adapting a “greener” approach towards the environment.
Local transport officials indicated that soon, the entry of diesel-based commercial vehicles into the city could be banned to prevent the vehicles from further degrading the city's environment.
They claimed that the new bus service will also directly link the Taj Mahal to the Akbar's Mausoleum of Sikandra at the Agra-Delhi Highway, operating on a circuit designed to facilitate the tourists arriving in diesel buses from Delhi, apart from other tourist-centric routes like Fatehpur Sikri.
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