CNG buses to ply in Ahmedabad soon

The Ahmedabad Municipal Transport Service (AMTS), which runs a CNG- fueled bus on a trial basis, plans to procure 100 CNG busses on a lease basis in the next two months. It has already invited bids in a bid to adhere to the Supreme Court's deadline of December 2004 to convert its public transport from petrol to CNG.

The Adani Group that has set up three CNG vending stations in Ahmedabad, at Jamalpur, Maninagar and Memco areas, said it is ready to cater to the CNG demands of the city.

"We are ready to meet the city's CNG demand with our CNG stations," Sanjay Gupta, chief executive officer, Adani Group told Business Standard. The group is also planning to set five more stations by March 2005, one each at Pandi, Vasna, Vadaj, Sarkhej-Gandhinagar Highway and Prahladnagar.

Interestingly, both the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation-run AMTS as well as the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation (GSRTC) blame the gas distributors for their inability to convert their fleet to CNG. They maintain that the CNG refilling facilities are still low.

"The Supreme Court has given the deadline of December 2004 to Ahmedabad to convert its public transport from petrol to CNG. AMTS already runs a CNG bus on trial basis. AMTS buses will start plying the city roads after Diwali. The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has planned to procure 100 new CNG buses to meet the Supreme Court deadline to control increasing pollution levels in the city," Raman Patel, chairman, AMTS told Business Standard.

Even the GSRTC is planning to introduce around 10 CNG buses between Vadodara and Surat on an experimental basis. GSRTC has about 9,000 buses, which cover 97.5 per cent areas in the state.

"If the Surat-Vadodara experiment is successful, we will extend the CNG bus service to other parts of the state. But there must be enough CNG filling centres," said a senior GSRTC official.

D J Pandian, director, Gujarat State Petronet Ltd said that there are enough CNG filling stations in the state. "We are facilitating the upcoming CNG stations in state. Five CNG stations are already operational in Surat set up by Gujarat Gas, one in Vadodara set up by Gail and three in Ahmedabad set up by the Adani's. CNG filling would not be a problem in state."

Meanwhile, the condition of the cash-starved AMTS is worsening by day. AMTS runs 400 buses in the city which are quite old and it would not make sense to convert those buses to CNG.

The only option is to buy new buses which is not possible as the AMTS is in red after incurring about Rs 220 crore loss. A new CNG bus would cost Rs 20 lakh.

The AMTS will require around Rs 100 crore to convert its fleet. However, AMTS recently has invited bids for procuring CNG busses from private operators.