Centre to fund 10,000 buses across Indian cities

The Urban Development ministry is planning to fund 10,000 buses across the country and has asked state governments to set up city-specific transport bodies to run these vehicles.
Urban Development (UD) secretary Sudhir Krishna said state governments should prepare project reports keeping in mind that one of the conditions for getting funding is that a special purpose vehicle (SPV) should be there for a city or cluster of cities to run these buses.
He said the funding would be available for cities of various sizes though earlier the ministry had mainly funded the 65 mission cities.
"We are expecting final guidelines to be notified within August, 2013. We have requested state governments to get the project reports prepared," Krishna said.

Officials said the ministry was keen that states set up city specific SPVs as it was felt that a different kind of management is required to run intra city-transport as compared to inter-district bus transport.
State Transport Corporations are more suited to handle inter-district operations but the needs related to management, operations, training, maintenance of city specific transport are different, an official said.