The Kerala State Road Transport Corporation’s (KSRTC) assurance in December 2021 of introducing 50 low-floor buses in the city for circular and radial-shuttle operations remains a far cry, even as Tirukochi and low-floor AC and non-AC city buses have been scrapped or diverted to mofussil depots.
The assurance of introducing 24 to 32 seater buses that are capable of negotiating Kochi’s narrow roads and having wider doors to enable easy boarding and disembarking came within a month of the launch of around 100 circular bus services in Thiruvananthapuram in November 2021.
A senior KSRTC official said talks are still under way on reintroducing low-floor city bus services in Kochi. He attributed the delay to, among other reasons, the agency being unable to procure adequate number of new electric buses to replace the fleet of low-floor circular-service buses operating in Thiruvananthapuram. “As per tentative plan, these low-floor buses were to be introduced in Kochi. A decision on this and finalising of their routes is long awaited,” he said.
