DTC curtails services on inter-state routes

The Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) has scaled down its services on 68 inter-state routes from April 2007 to March this year.
As per its Operational Statistics report, DTC should have plied buses on 80 inter-state routes in 2007-2008, but from April 2013 to March this year it operated on just 12 routes.
At present, DTC is operating buses on few inter-state routes like Noida, Ghaziabad, Meerut, Bulandshar and Gurgaon.
"There were several buses plied on many inter-state routes four-five years ago and during this period, DTC buses used to touch several areas of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana," a DTC official said.

According to the report, in 2008-2009 the corporation used to ply its buses on 73 inter-state routes, but it brought down the numbers of these routes to 44 in 2009-2010.
The official said that the main reason to cut down these routes is that DTC does not have diesel-run buses now, which is considered suitable for long inter-state routes where the number of CNG stations is very less.

"When DTC had diesel-run buses, it would run buses up to even Jaipur, Ajmer and other areas. But after court's order, it had to stop their operation and replaced them with CNG-run buses," he added.

Apart from that DTC does not have sufficient buses to run on inter-state routes.
The report also said that it plied buses on 25 inter-state routes during 2010-2011, followed by 21 the next year and 23 inter-state routes in 2012-2013.
Apart from inter-state routes, DTC used to run buses on 787 city routes in 2007-08, but in last financial year, it ran buses on 579 such routes, cutting down 208 city routes during seven years.