In news : Recently, the Finance Minister , during the Budget session announced that a Scheme to induct over 20,000 city buses in 5 lakh plus cities including Hilly/ UT/ Northeast State capital cities (total: 111) will be launched to strengthen organized city bus services, improve urban mobility and ease in living.
City Bus Augmentation
- A Scheme to induct over 20,000 city buses in 5 lakh plus cities including Hilly/ UT/ NorthEast State capital cities (total: 111) will be launched to strengthen organized city bus services, improve urban mobility and ease in living.
- Scheme components include procurement for city operations of all types of new buses with clean fuel (excluding hybrid/ battery electric buses already covered under the FAME Scheme of Deptt of Heavy Industries (DHI)), associated infrastructure and opex support for a period of 5 years after procurement.
- An outlay of about Rs.15,000 cr has been kept for this Scheme.
- It will boost the automobile industry, generate direct/ indirect employment and facilitate the cities to adhere to the Covid-19 guidelines i.e. social distancing in urban transport.
- Scheme will promote public transport, help in reducing congestion, pollution and accidents and promote clean air in these cities.
Green Urban Mobility
- This Scheme intends to provide impetus to green and clean urban mobility projects.
- It is a step in the direction of meeting climate change mitigation and sustainability goals.
- The focus of this Scheme is to improve Non-Motorised Transport (NMT) infrastructure, promote innovative urban transit modes, strengthen Intelligent Transport System (ITS) facilities, retrofitting buses & other modes for energy efficiency/ clean fuel, and other technological and innovative measures for green urban transport.
- An outlay of about Rs. 3,000 cr has been kept under this Scheme for projects, which will be selected through Green Urban Mobility Challenge.
- This will help in reducing pollution levels through changes in traveling practices, improvement of urban mobility infrastructure and services such as pedestrian/ cycling pathways, last mile connectivity, enhance Information Technology applications and adopt innovations in implementation and financing of urban mobility projects.
Metro Projects
| Name of project | No of corridors | Route length | Sanctioned cost (in Rs crore) |
| Chennai phase-2 | 3 | 118.9 | 63,246 |
| Bangalore 2A and 2 B | 2 | 58.19 | 14,788 |
| Nagpur Phase-2 | 4 | 43.80 | 6,708 |
| Nashik (MetroNeo) | 2 | 33 | 2,092 |
| Kochi Phase-2 | 1 | 11.2 | 1,957 |
Low cost Metro solution for tier2/3 cities
MetrolLite
- 40% cost of conventional metro system.
- Peak Hour Peak Direction Traffic- upto 15,000
MetroNeo
- Rubber tyred metro
- Peak Hour Peak Direction Traffic upto 8,000 and
- 25% of cost of conventional metro system.
Cities to be provided with MetroLite and MetroNeo system
Some of Tier-2 cities like Gorakhpur, Allahabad, Jammu, Srinagar, Rajkot, Baroda, Dehradun, Coimbatore, Bhiwadi- Dharuhera etc. are making proposals under MetroLite/ MetroNeo and Nasik has already sent a proposal for MetroNeo, which is under consideration.
Do you know?
An intelligent transportation system (ITS) is an advanced application which aims to provide innovative services relating to different modes of transport and traffic management and enable users to be better informed and make safer, more coordinated, and ‘smarter’ use of transport networks.
Classification of Indian Cities
Tier 1 cities include the top metropolitan cities of India. These cities are densely populated and have higher living expenses. Major international airports, industries, top multi-specialty hospitals, education, and research institutes are located in tier 1 cities.
Tier 2 cities include developing cities with a rapid growth rate in industrial and allied sectors. These cities are the most convenient destination for foreigners, especially medical travelers, to get the best services at affordable costs
Tier 3 cities include all the other cities of the country except the tier 1 and tier 2 cities comes under this category. These include cities having lower population density and cost of living. The tier 3 cities have poor air connectivity and other infrastructure facilities
