West Bengal’s new state government might have pushing towards procuring electric vehicles toeing the national line considering environmental and climatic virtues; but both the government and private operators claimed in a meeting on Saturday in Kolkata that running electric vehicles in state is facing critical economical and technical challenges.
However, environmentalists pin hope on EV vehicles including e buses as a potential game-changer for the city; which is one of the most polluted and climatically vulnerable metros in India.
State transport minister Arjun Singh earlier told The Plurals that his department has been going through the tendering process to procure 400 new buses; a mix of electric and environment friendly CNG (compressed natural gas) run buses.
“The manufacturing companies will have to organise everything from procuring to running to setting up charging stations mainly in our depots, as well as maintaining the buses and collect ticket revenues. We will pay them an amount for every kilometre travelled,” explained the minister.
Bengal has missed the bus
West Bengal, despite one of the earliest states to procure electric buses in 2019, presently has only 140 electric buses including 20 new buses those were recently added to the fleet.
In contrast, India has over 14,000 electric buses operating across various states and union territories, led by Delhi with about 5,000 units followed by Maharashtra with about 3300 e-buses, Karnataka with around 2300 and Uttar Pradesh with over 850 e-buses.
Incidentally only around 44 electric buses out of 120 procured initially – less than 40 percent – are still running on the city road as operators point out several reasons behind West Bengal’s poor performance in electric and even CNG bus sectors during the meeting organised by ‘sustainable mobility network’, a conglomerate of environment and transport-based organisations. West Bengal presently has 180 CNG buses.
Push back from financial and technical challenges
“There are both the financial and technical challenges in electric buses,” pointed out Anindya Roy Choudhury, a senior official from West Bengal State Transport Corporation in the meeting.
“First of all, the number of kilometres a bus would run with full charge, as promised by the manufacturers, never realised. Initially we were used to get about 120 km with a full charge against the assured range of 150 km; and over the years now they run about 70 km with a full charge, moreover running these buses during waterlogged condition is difficult,” said one government official in the meeting.
“There are also issue of changing batteries and other spare parts which are not only extremely costly but often few of them are not easily available in eastern India. Charging is also a major issue,” explained another official.
Needs government help to run e buses
“Unless government provides financial help on environmental and linked ground, scheduling proper routes and running electric buses in the city is difficult to be sustained despite day to day less running cost compared to diesel run buses,” stated one expert.
“It is not financially viable hence the private operators have no plan to run electric buses,” said Titu Saha, general secretary of city suburban bus services that runs around 3500 to 4000 buses.
Saha also complained that they had to stop running 10 CNG buses those they procured as there is not even one CNG filling station in city for private buses.
Limitations of initial e- buses should not cloud judgement
“The limitations of Calcutta’s first batch of e-buses must not cloud judgment regarding e-bus viability, as the benchmark as the technology has improved leaps and bounds,” observed Anumita Roychowdhury, a transport pollution expert at the non-profit Centre for Science and Environment (CSE),
“Although Calcutta has lost time in securing orders under Central Government incentive programs like PM E-DRIVE and PM e-Bus Sewa, it must move urgently to leverage available support to scale up and modernise its bus fleet. By targeting urban clusters in and around the state capital, West Bengal can tap into central assistance for zero-emission mass commuting”, she added.