Around 1.5 lakh commuters use BRTS every day and the service fetches the AJL a daily income of around Rs7 lakh.
Ahmedabad BRTS is an impressive project but its needs to revise its fare structure to make itself sustainable, believes Sudhir Krishna, secretary, Union urban development department.
Krishna was in the city on Wednesday to review projects under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Goa. He also said that more satellite towns like Sanand should be developed.
Krishna travelled by a BRTS bus from Memnagar to Kankaria before attending a meeting to review JNNURM projects in the above-mentioned three states on the western coast of the country.
The review meeting on Wednesday was attended by principle secretaries and secretaries of urban development of respective states, municipal commissioners of various municipal corporations and officials of the JNNURM department.
"Ahmedabad BRTS is very impressive and it can be a model for other cities," Krishna said. He, however, added that its fare structure was on the lower side and that an upward revision in it is needed to make the project self-sustainable.
At present, the Ahmedabad Janmarg Ltd (AJL), a special purpose vehicle floated by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) for BRTS, can recover around 95% of the cost of running buses on the BRTS route. However, it can recover only 78% of the total cost of operation, including the cost of information technology used and employees' salary, said a senior AJL official.
AJL officials, however, also said that, as of now, there is no proposal to increase the fare of BRTS buses. "Whether or not the fare should be revised is a political decision and we have no role in it," said an official.
Around 1.5 lakh commuters use BRTS every day and the service fetches the AJL a daily income of around Rs7 lakh.
Krishna also said that the ministry had already released the first installment of the total grant of Rs93 crore for the development of Sanand as a satellite town of Ahmedabad. He said that more such satellite towns should be developed in the country. He also favours bringing in more cities under JNNURM. He said that progress of JNNURM projects in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Goa is average and there is scope for some improvement.
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