SURAT: Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) will add at least 150 buses to its existing fleet of city and BRTS buses by January 2019. With this the fleet size will increase to over 560. The civic body is planning to run more than 650 buses in city on daily basis with target of achieving ridership of 3.5– 4 lakh by the end of March 2019.After starting the BRTS service in January 2016 and re-launching city bus services in November that year, SMC currently has 153 BRT and 260 city buses plying along different routes.Kamlesh Nayak, assistant commissioner SMC said, “Our aim is to cover the entire city and provide mass transport within 500 metres of last mile connectivity points. We have already ordered another 250 buses of which the first batch of 50 has arrived.”SMC commissioner M Thennarasan said, “The main purpose for mass transport is to bring down congestion on city roads and emission. Once we have 150 new buses in service we will have a strength of nearly 650 buses plying on roads.”For increasing ridership steps like provision of last mile non-motorised transport facility, city money card, single ticket, Integrated Transport Management System (ITMS) etc are under implementation.Currently, operation of mass transport costs SMC Rs 13 crore per month, but revenue earned is just 40% at Rs 5.25 crore.“We plan to take measures to bring the recovery ratio to 80-90%. This can be achieved by increasing ridership on routes which are still not doing well,” said Thennarasan.

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