Unified time table for buses to come in force from tomorrow

New Delhi, July 30 (UNI) With a view to plugging at the root causes of accidents involving bluelines over the past few weeks, the Delhi Government today announced a new unified time table which would come in force on 48 routes in the city from tomorrow.

Making the announcement, Delhi Transport Minister Haron Yusuf said initially, the new Unified time tables would be implemented on 48 routes which are the busiest and where number of buses were 20 or more.

Based on a comprehensive survey, the new time tables take into account the physical running time (per trip), number of red lights and number of bus stands and sufficient rest time / stay at the original destination.

Mr Yusuf said the new time tables are in a user friendly format containing all the relevant details of the route like the starting point, destination point, route length, number of buses, number of bus stops, number of red lights, first and last trip from both ends of the route. First trip from Railway Station / ISBTs / Rural areas have been started very early in the day. He further said that DTC will also have to follow this unified time table so that clashes with private buses do not take place.

However, DTC will operate their buses on the basis of available fleet.

Equal number of buses have been given at the starting point from both ends (a route containing 40 buses has 20 buses from one point and 20 buses from the other). In the earlier time tables starting point used to be given depending on the will of the operator which resulted in no-uniformity in the time table, the Minister said.

Mr Yusuf said that while framing the new time tables, main emphasis was on lane driving, maintaining a speed limit of 40 Kmph and restriction on overtaking by transport vehicles.

According to the unified time tables, it has been ensured that the driver is changed after 8 hours and sufficient rest is given at the completion of a trip.

Mr Yusuf said in most of the routes two trips have been reduced and running time increased to ensure that each bus plied around 200 Km per day. Only in few of the rural routes (like 539, 708) where there are very few red lights and bus stands, the trips have not been reduced and the buses on these routes are covering around 250 km per day.

The Minister said all these measures would help reduce the fatigue and stress caused to the driver, thus reducing chances of accidents.

The Minister said that there are about 2000 buses on these 48 routes which include the Tubra mudrika, Gramin mudrika, Outer mudrika and the Noida mudrika.

UNI