Commuters suffer as 250 govt buses lie unused, around 50 go off roads after deluge
The Statesman | 25 September 2025The state government claimed that Kolkata recorded heaviest ever rainfalls since 1980 on Tuesday night.
According to sources in the state transport department, more than 45 buses of WBTC went off the roads because of breakdown problems on waterlogged roads in the city and outskirts on Wednesday.
“With breakdown problems of so many buses, it becomes difficult for us to operate maximum number government buses, particularly couple of days ahead of the Durga Puja festival. We need around 700 to 750 buses daily to keep public transport services normal to some extent,” a senior official of the transport department said requesting anonymity.
The transport department is regularly flooded with demands from common passengers for plying more government fleets in routes connecting Kolkata and adjoining districts.
The official said: “Besides the 45 buses, around 250 other fleets, including 40 AC and 20 Volvo buses under the WBTC, are lying unused at the corporation’s different depots for the seven to eight months. All these fleets are not in operational conditions because of mechanical faults like defective tyres, gears, clutches etc. It requires huge funds of around Rs 13 crore to repair all these buses so that they could be operational.”
A proposal has been sent to the finance department at the state secretariat, Nabanna, requesting it to release the amount as soon as possible, the sources in the WBTC said, requesting anonymity.
“More than five months are over but the finance department is yet to release the funds. Plight of passengers could have been reduced during the festival once we repair the defunct buses and ply them,” he added.
Earlier, the cash-strapped transport department had decided to engage private agencies to ply government buses in several routes to generate revenue and increase availability of fleets through outsourcing initiatives.
But the initiatives could not materialise because the private agencies felt that the move was not viable to them in terms of revenue generation.
The private operators found that the kilometre mileage in plying government buses is very low as compared with that of the private buses. For government buses, fuel consumption is very high against poor mileage.
Sources in the transport department said that the outsourcing scheme was not lucrative for the franchisers. The scheme is still effective only in two routes C-26 (Howrah-Baruipur) and D-1 (Howrah-Barasat) out of around seven routes that were given to franchisers by the department.
