In 2025, 80% of total bus fleet in Delhi will be electric: CM Kejriwal

By 2025 end, 80 per cent of Delhi's total bus fleet will be electric, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Monday and asserted that acquisition of e-buses will go a long way in reducing pollution in the national capital.

Sharing a roadmap for procurement of electric buses, he said the government will be buying 1,500 such vehicles in 2023 and by 2025, 6,380 electric buses will be bought.

Kejriwal, who flagged off 50 electric buses from Rajghat Depot here, said the addition of the new buses will take the electric buses plying on the Delhi roads to 300.

Congratulating the officers behind the mission and the people of Delhi, he said, With the induction of 50 new electric buses today, Delhi now has 7,379 buses under its city bus transportation fleet. This includes 4,060 buses being operated under Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) and 3,319 buses being operated under DIMTS (Delhi Integrated Multimodal Transit Systems). This is the highest ever number of buses in Delhi's fleet."

The chief minister said for many years, new buses were not procured in Delhi, but when God blesses, he does so abundantly.

"Right after we started procuring buses in Delhi, the mission has not seemed to stop even once. The Delhi government has recently started the process of taking over the operations of 100 electric feeder buses of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) and plan to operate a total of 480 feeder buses in the city in 2023.

"This means we already have 400 e-buses in Delhi, with 100 plying on metro feeder routes. Mumbai has 406 e-buses, the highest in the country. We are six buses behind them but we'll be far ahead of them very soon," he said at the event.

Kejriwal said that in 2023, 1,500 e-buses more will be procured.

"So with the already existing 300 DTC e-buses, and the DMRC's incoming 480, Delhi will have 2,280 e-buses by the end of this year. As many as 6,380 additional electric buses will be procured by the government by 2025. By the end of 2025, total bus fleet size would be 10,480 which will comprise 8,280 electric buses, nearly 80 per cent of the total fleet size," he said.

The chief minister also said the process installing charging points for e-buses at depots is going on, and three depots already have the facility.

The electrification of 56 bus depots has been targeted for now. We are spending almost Rs 1,500 crore on the electrification of these bus depots. Three depots are already electrified, 17 more to be electrified by June 2023 and 36 by December 2023, he said.

Referring to facilities available in the buses, he said besides being equipped with CCTVs, panic buttons and all other modern tech, they are very eco-friendly.

"Pollution is amongst the biggest woes of Delhi and these buses are going to radically aid the cause of curbing pollution. Delhiites have been making succinct efforts against pollution and just this morning it was reported that 2022 was the least polluted year in the last seven years. There's always scope for more, but this acquisition will greatly help this fight, he said.

Kejriwal also inaugurated an ultra charging station and also reviewed the facilities available there.

At ultra charging stations, buses can be charged in a very short time.