Chennai: Tamilnadu Transport Minister M R Vijayabhaskar announced the government’s initiative to run 500 electric buses in Chennai, Madurai and Coimbatore from yesterday.
Speaking to reporters, he said Edappadi K Palaniswami-led government was the first to sign an agreement with C-40 Cities Clean Bus Declaration in 2018 to operate battery-operated buses in the transport corporations. The project was aimed at reducing carbon emissions.
The TN government is now planning to run 2,000 electric buses and 12,000 BSVI-compliant buses informed the minister.
When asked about the Madras High Court raising questions on why the helmet rule was not enforced in TN, Vijayabhaskar said the rule has been made mandatory and added that wearing of helmets was being followed in Chennai, but it was less in rural areas. Several lakh people had been fined for violating the rule,” he further said.
Inspecting school buses to see whether they were fit to run, the minister said of the 32,576 school buses, 1,009 have been found unfit, and those schools have been asked to operate the buses after addressing those issues.
On issuing free passes to school and college students, he said in the last academic year free passes were issued to 20.55 lakh students. Tenders have been floated to issue free passes to a total of 24.20 lakh students this year, he added.