Commuters facing hardships to access various public transport facilities of suburban train and Metro Rail services would soon be relieved as the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) would be deploying small buses on a mass scale as part of the first and last mile connectivity (FLMC).
Named as the FLMC project, the MTC has called for tenders for purchasing 300 small buses with the first phase to be launched after the Assembly election gets over in May first week.
A senior official of the MTC said that the FLMC project was initiated based on the study conducted by CUMTA and ITDP and also the feedback received from the private routes allotted for private buses in the added areas of the Chennai Corporation.
With the small buses which are at present an old fleet brought 12 to 13 years ago and are being operated on routes that were not scientifically studied, the FLMC project would bring a big change in small bus operations where commuters would not have to walk for more than five minutes to reach a bus stop and the maximum waiting time would be anywhere between 10 and 20 minutes.
As per the tender, a total of 300 small buses is planned to be operated on the gross cost contract (GCC) basis of electric buses. Already the MTC has implemented GCC for operating big electric buses in the city. The small electric bus would have a dimension of seven metres and would help in phasing out the 162 small buses that are under operation. The FLMC project has identified 162 routes, and in the first phase, 300 e-buses would be deployed in 85 routes.
