Kochi: The Kerala Urban Road Transport Corporation (KURTC) would operate feeder services between metro stations and also from near-by satellite towns, giving it a bigger role than the initial plan to use its buses to provide last-mile connectivity to Metro commuters in the Greater Cochin region.
"The latest decision means the KURTC will be operating nearly 300 buses as feeder services. While the electric or LNG operated mini buses will be operated between various metro stations, the AC low-floor buses will be deployed from satellite towns like Alapuzha," a senior KURTC official said.
A proposal has already been put up before German Bank Kfw, which is financing the Rs 819.23-crore Aqua Boat project of the Kochi Metro Rail Ltd, to extend loan to purchase the buses. “The same has been included in the Indo-German Joint Forum Committee on May 18,” he said.
A team of officials from the Kfw and the Urban Mass Transit Company Ltd (UMTC) held discussions with Corporation chairperson Antony Chacko and visited the KURTC’s Thevara Hub the other day as part of project appraisal. The city feeder services would be operated such that maximum number of people would be benefitted and the services are available at a frequency of five minutes.
For this, planning is being done with the help of UMTC which helped cities such as Ahmedabad and Amritsar to implement Bus-based Public Transit Systems. Earlier, the KURTC and the KMRL had reached a pact to operate AC low-floor buses as feeder services to provide commuters with last mile travel across nearly 10 stations in the city.
“Basically we aim to provide connectivity to areas like Fort Kochi, Thoppumpadi, Chitoor, Vallarpadam, Cheranellore, Tripunithura, Aroor and the like with the nearest metro stations. The aim is to provide comfortable journey to the commuters,” the official said.
