Electric buses for Mysore soon

The historic City of Mysore near here will become the first city in India to boast of electric trolley buses when state-run transport corporation presses into service a total of 100 such buses.

The Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC), which made a presentation before Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy and Transport Minister N Cheluvarayaswamy, has chosen Mysore for introducing electric trolley bus service on account of the comparatively lower scale of operation in the City than Bangalore.

Cheluvarayaswamy told reporters that the scale of operation is low in Mysore compared to Bangalore, where the pressure on public transport is high. “Also, these emission-free buses will make ideal fleet of public transport for a heritage city like Mysore”, he said.

The cost of each electric trolley bus is a whopping Rs 15 million and the Karnataka Government will be setting aside a total of Rs 1.5 billion under the National Urban Renewal Mission to import a hundred electric buses, KSRTC’s Director S Bhaskar Rao told reporters after the presentation in Bangalore.

The electric trolley buses, which are powered by electricity drawn from two overhead wires, form part of the urban transport system in cities like San Francisco, California and Philadelphia in the US, besides Moscow, Athens, Belgrade and St Petersburg. These buses draw power using two trolley poses, like electric trains, and run on pneumatic tyres.

Introduction of the electric trolley buses is part of the KSRTC’s plan to modernize its services and explore alternative sources of energy to run buses in view of the increasing cost of fossil fuels, Cheluvarayaswamy said. The Karnataka Government is already on the look out for a global consultant to advise the authorities on the introduction of electric trolley buses.

Though Mysore is better known for its old world charm and historical sites, the City appears to be stealing a march over Bangalore by slowly emerging as a high-tech hub. Mysore has already beaten Bangalore by becoming the first Wi-Fi City in India. A team of networking professionals recently converted the entire City into a Wi-Fi hotspot that provides wireless Internet connectivity Mysore