The Times of India  30.09.2010

PUNE: The new buses being procured by the Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Ltd under the JNNURM will be operated and maintained on public-private partnership basis.

According to PMPML officials, each private operator will get to run a minimum of 150 buses for a period of 10 years. They will have to pay Rs 12 lakh per bus to the PMPML.

In the partnership arrangement, the PMPML will collect the ticket revenues and make monthly payments to the private operator for operations. The routes and schedules of buses will be decided by the PMPML.

The central government, under its scheme for funding of buses as part of the JNNURM, had sanctioned 650 buses for the Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad municipal corporations in February 2009. The transport body has been able to procure only 150 buses till now. The remaining buses are expected to be delivered in phases from October.

According to officials, initially, 450 buses would be given to private operators for operation and maintenance. This number is likely to increase. The new buses will have an unique colour combination, the officials added.

Last week, divisional commissioner Dilip Band, who is holding additional charge of the PMPML's chairman and managing director, had said that, in addition to the 650 buses sanctioned by the central government, another 200 buses have been sanctioned in principle by the government for Pune. Band made a reference to the controversy regarding the position of bus doors and said that the new buses will have doors on both sides.

Band said that a plan is in the offing to ply 200 air-conditioned buses on PPP basis. The objective is to attract people using cars, he added.

The Pioneer  29.09.2010

Staff Reporter | Bhopal

The entire transport business of the city would start functioning from newly developed Kokta based Rani Avantibai Transport Nagar from January, 2011. A decision to this effect was taken in the meeting of transporters presided over by district collector Nikunj Shrivastava on Tuesday.

The meeting decided that those transporters and garage owners, who have been allotted land plots in the Transport Nagar, should compulsorily deposit the entire price of the plots by October 30. A cess of 1 per cent would be slapped on those, who deposit the amount in November and the persons depositing the amount in December would suffer the cess of 2 per cent as penalty.

In the meeting it was informed that till now only 442 persons have been allotted the plots and out of these, 142 persons have deposited the amount. The persons yet to deposit the amount comprise 72 transporters and 70 garage owners. In a significant achievement, around 110 persons have deposited the amount for land plots in the last month itself.

It was informed in the meeting that projects for developing basic amenities at the Transport Nagar are underway and would be completed before the commencement of normal functioning of the transporters there.

The concerned officials informed that the first and second round process of land plot allotment has been completed and the process under the third phase is already underway at present. The participants of the meeting were informed that the remaining 264 land plots would be distributed on the basis of limited competition.

Commissioner of Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) Manish Singh and BMC additional commissioner Arvind Dubey, office bearers of transport association also attended the meeting. BMC commissioner on the occasion said the Municipal Corporation still holds some portion of unused land in the Transport Nagar and in future, new plots would be carved out and would be distributed to the transporters, who have missed the opportunity of applying for land plots in the initial rounds.