245 new buses to join MTC fleet by year-end

The development comes at the time when most of the vehicles in MTC’s fleet were nearing their lifespan.  Less than 1,000 vehicles were only below five years. The poor condition of the MTC buses was one of the persistent complaints from commuters as a majority of them were being operated beyond their permissible limit of 6 to 7 lakh km.   

According to official data, the MTC has a total number of 3,716 buses, of which 1,120 were over 10 years old, 1,921 aged between 5 and 10 years and the 674 alone were less than five years. 

“The buses have become unsafe with leaky roofs, shaky seats, jammed window panes and non-functional automatic doors. The vehicles rattle on bad roads giving a nightmare to commuters,” said R Shanumugam, a regular commuter from Triplicane.  As an affirmation of the passengers’ plight, statistics on road accidents reveal that MTC buses were involved in more than 12,000 accidents in 2016-17 alone.  

“We ply buses beyond 6 to 7 lakh km, which is beyond the permissible limit. A majority of vehicles in the existing fleet is unsafe to drive given their condition. We even have buses where drivers using the unused oil cans as their seats when they are the wheel,” Ramamurthy, a driver at the MTC’s Avadi depot, said.   

“The government sanctioned the proposal to induct new vehicles a couple of years ago. Currently, the works related to the construction of chassis are undertaken. The new vehicles will be introduced before the end of this year,” Anbu Abraham, Managing Director of the MTC said.

He highlighted that the government introduced 515 new buses across the state in June and nearly 200 were allotted to Salem and Coimbatore divisions.