IRT floats tender to procure 150 low-floor buses in line with MHC order
The bus design should ensure easy passenger accessibility including for persons with disabilities (PwDs), and passenger comfort.
Representative Image
CHENNAI: The Institute of Road Transport has floated a tender to procure 150 fully built low-floor buses for six Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporations including 38 for TNSTC Kumbakkonam and 33 buses for Madurai in line with the Madras High Court order to make public transport accessible to persons with disabilities and senior citizens.
According to the tender invited by the IRT, it seeks to procure Bharat stage six compliant non-air-conditioned low-floor diesel buses.
The bus design should ensure easy passenger accessibility including for persons with disabilities (PwDs), and passenger comfort.
As per the bus procurement plant, TNSTC Villupuram would get as many as 26 low-floor buses, TNSTC Coimbatore would get 20 buses. TNSTC Tirunelveli and Salem would get 17 and 16 buses each.
The IRT's fresh tender for the low-floor buses was floated after the High Court bench headed by the then acting Chief Justice T Raja and Justice D Bharatha Chakravarthy in April to float a separate tender to procure 157 low-floor buses while ordering to reduce the number of high-floor buses procurement plan from 1,107 to 950.
The bench lamented that not even a single low-floor bus was plying in any part of the State as on date, despite the Supreme Court as well as the High Court having passed several judgements since 2005 for the procurement of such government buses.
Nevertheless, now that the State government had acknowledged the need to provide 100% universally accessible public transport in the future and had promised to make a beginning following a legal battle waged by activist Vaishnavi Jayakumar, the judges welcomed the move with certain directions.
All future bus procurement should be low-floor buses in the cities and its suburbs and also to develop a mobile application to locate low-floor buses in the cities like Chennai, Coimbatore, Trichy and Madurai, the order said.
It may be noted that the IRT had invited bids for the procurement of 442 low-floor buses for MTC, TNSTC Madurai and Coimbatore.