Indore City Bus is a road transport system run by Indore City Transport Services Limited or ICTSL. This transport system runs through 277 kilometers of road network in the Indore

Indore

Indore is one of the major city in India, the largest city and commercial center of the state of Madhya Pradesh in central India. Indore is located 190 km west of the state capital Bhopal. According to the 2011 Indian census, Indore city has a population of 1,960,631...

 city and surrounding areas. The city bus service has 6 private partners along with the city administration and the total investment has gone more than 40 Crores.

History of local transportation in Indore

Indore is the largest metropolitan city of the state of Madhya Pradesh

Madhya Pradesh

Madhya Pradesh , often called the Heart of India, is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal and Indore is the largest city....

 and a center of trade and commerce. The city is growing rapidly with need for increasing mobility, high travel demand, increasing intensity of traffic, congestion, delays, accidents and other transportation problems.

The intra-city public transport system is essentially road based with 500 private minibuses, 550 tempos(to reduce pollution now replaced by Maruti van as contract carrier), more than 100 Metro Taxi (Flat fare Rs.11.95 per KM) and 10,000 auto rickshaw

Auto rickshaw

An auto rickshaw or three-wheeler is a usually three-wheeled cabin cycle for private use and as a vehicle for hire. It is a motorized version of the traditional pulled rickshaw or cycle rickshaw...

s. The city felt a lack of public mass transport system for long time.

Company

Indore City Transport Services Limited was incorporated on December 1, 2005 with an objective to operate and manage the public transport system of Indore. Seven key people were identified as the Board of Directors. Indore Municipal Corporation and Indore Development Authority invested an authorized capital of Rs 2,500,000 jointly. The collector of Indore, Vivek Aggarwal was responsible for the execution of the project to run the bus service. The company is run as a public-private partnership.

Rates & Passes

The city bus offers daily passes to regular travelers. The city bus fare has been increased by Rs. 1 and the monthly pass rate has been increased from Rs. 300/- to Rs.350 This increase was attributed towards the recent crude oil price hike which made diesel and petrol costlier in India.

Accolades

Noted writer Gurcharan Das

Gurcharan Das

Gurcharan Das , , is an Indian author, commentator and public intellectual. He is the author of The Difficulty of Being Good: On the subtle art of dharma which interrogates the epic, Mahabharata...

 wrote in his blog on how Indore's bus service could prove to be helpful in solving New Delhi

New Delhi

New Delhi is the capital city of India. It serves as the centre of the Government of India and the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. New Delhi is situated within the metropolis of Delhi. It is one of the nine districts of Delhi Union Territory. The total area of the city is...

's bus transport problems. Blueline buses killed as many as 488 people in New Delhi during the 3 year span of 2005-2008. Gurcharan writes "Indore is now quoted (with Bogota

Bogotá

Bogotá, Distrito Capital , from 1991 to 2000 called Santa Fé de Bogotá, is the capital, and largest city, of Colombia. It is also designated by the national constitution as the capital of the department of Cundinamarca, even though the city of Bogotá now comprises an independent Capital district...

) as having the best bus service in the world".

External links

• http://www.citybusindore.com/
• http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Columnists/Blueline_solution_in_Indore/articleshow/2625137.cms