Kochi: Low floor AC buses in dockyard

Kochi: City commuters are missing many of the cool comfy rides in the low-floor AC buses of the Kerala Urban Road State Transport Corporation (KURTC) these days because nearly one-third of the 50 Volvo buses of the Ernakulam depot are in the dockyard awaiting maintenance and fitness tests.

While seven buses are being readied for the fitness test, nearly 10 buses are in the dockyard for sometime over lack of spare parts.

“The repairing of the AC Volvo buses has turned into a time-consuming process and it takes an average 15 days for the buses to be repaired even for minor troubles. Volvo Ltd has only a single facility at Chandiroor on the outskirts of the district. The number of vehicles coming there has gone up compared to the initial days and we have to wait for our turn which now takes weeks altogether,” said P Sasidharan, Chief Traffic Officer.

The Ernakulam depot is conducting a total of 44 schedules, keeping six buses as spares. However, upto 10 schedules are getting cancelled everyday due to non-availability of the JnNuRM buses.

Meanwhile, sources said the Volvo company was deliberately delaying the repairing and maintenance works of the KSRTC buses as the corporation has pending dues to be cleared with respect to earlier works.

Sasidharan said action had been taken to pool back a dozen ‘Thirukochi’ buses currently allotted to neighbouring depots like Aluva and conduct more city services as a temporary relief to commuters.