The Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport Undertaking has plans to add to its fleet of air-conditioned buses by adding 200 more buses.
The BEST, however, plans to acquire these buses without spending any money. Instead, it willl just lease out advertising rights on the body of these buses.
“We have come out with an expression of interest to add 200 more air-conditioned buses to our fleet,” said a BEST official. This does not mean that the latest fleet of 282 air-conditioned King Long buses will be scrapped from service.
“There is demand to have more air-conditioned routes and we will just be catering to that demand by adding more buses. Let us see what kind of response we get with this expression of interest,” added the official.
BEST, which is still trying to recover its losses wants to own the additional fleet of air-conditioned buses without spending any money on it. “In return the agency will have the rights to
exploit the advertising space on these 200 buses,”
In May this year, the BEST officials had declared that they would gradually phase out the King Long fleet in batches of 20 buses due to the technical issues and breakdowns in the controversial buses.