Block on green lane: High fares of e-buses may discourage common man

With the Tamil Nadu government coming out with an ambitious plan to replace its existing fleet of buses with electric vehicles in a phased manner, the experts in the transportation sector feel that environment-friendly electric buses would serve its purpose only if it remains accessible to all sections of the public with affordable fare. 

 After several years of talks, the Metropolitan Transport Corporation started trial operation of the first electric bus in the State last month. Minister of Transport MR Vijayabhaskar, after inspecting the trial operation of the electric bus on August 27, announced that the minimum fare of the e-bus during the trial operation would be Rs 11, which is Deluxe bus fare. “When we start permanent operation of the e-buses, the minimum fare would be Rs 15, which is on a par with air-conditioned buses,” he said.  

Vijayabhaskar said that 825 electric buses would be inducted into the State Transport Undertakings (STUs) this financial year. Under phase II of Faster Adoption and Manufacture of Electric Vehicles (FAME) India scheme, the Central government is offering a flat subsidy of Rs 50 lakh per electric bus. “The State has planned to purchase 525 electric buses for Coimbatore, Madurai, Vellore, Tiruchi and Thanjavur districts and 300 buses for Chennai. The vehicles would be inducted into service within one year,” he said. Besides, the STUs plan to add 2,000 electric buses and 12,000 BS VI buses would be procured through an interest-free loan from German Development Bank KfW. 

In the Tamil Nadu Electric Vehicle Policy 2019, which was released by Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami on September 16, the government had proposed to replace the existing fleet of 21,000 buses STUs with five per cent of electric buses every year, which is around 1,000 EVs a year. 

The induction of electric buses has come at a time when the STUs, particularly MTC, have been witnessing a steep decline in patronage after the revision of fares last year. To win back the lost passengers, the MTC has started operating more number of the low-fare ordinary bus services. Experts in public transportation feel that fixing a minimum fare of Rs 15 would not help attract the public to take the electric buses. Instead, it will force them to opt for private vehicles.  

KP Subramanian, former professor, Department of Urban Engineering, Anna University, said that from the environment point of view, electric buses will have a controlling effect on air pollution. “If the fares of such buses are high, it won’t be affordable for common people and only high-income groups could travel in it. Moreover, if EVs make the majority of the fleet, the patronage will fall like in 2011 and last year after fare revision,” he said, adding that the public transport has to be commensurate with the affordability of the common man. 

“It will be beneficial to the environment only when common people can afford to travel on electric buses,” he said. Shreya Gadepalli, who leads the South Asia Programme of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, said that investment in improving bus quality is money well spent. “Buses are 10 times more efficient than cars. Bus users should be hailed as environmental champions. But their numbers are dropping alarmingly due to high bus fares and drop in service availability and quality,” she said.  

When asked about the high cost of electric buses, she said that the onus of covering the cost should not be on MTC. “Presently, car owners are the biggest beneficiaries of public spending in the form of flyovers, road widening and free parking. Instead, the government’s investment to upgrade bus service will not only save the environment but can also give a boost to the economy. High-quality buses must not mean high fares,” she added. Different cities have different strategies in fixing fares for the public buses, Sai Ratna Chaitanya Gurugubelli, Associate - Transport Systems, ITDP, points out. He said that like Chennai, Mumbai which witnessed a steep decline in the patronage reduced the bus fares by half to woo back the passengers. “Now their patronage has increased. In fact, the minimum fare for AC buses is Rs 6 in Mumbai. Whereas in Chennai, the minimum fare for express services in Rs 7 and deluxe is Rs 11 and AC bus is Rs 15,” he said. Pune operates 125 electric buses of 12-meter length and 25 EV buses of nine-meter length. “They are charging the same fare as that of regular buses,” he said. 

Stating that public transportation should be affordable to all eventually, he said, “There is always going to be a gap between the earnings and expenditure in the public bus services. You cannot expect the earnings to come only from the fares. There should be other sources of revenue as well. There is no public transportation system in the World that earns money on its own. Even in the case of Singapore, it recovers only 60 per cent of its cost from operation and rest is funded by the government. It is the same in the case of London, too,” he said.