New avatar of Kolkata’s double decker buses | Fusion - WeRIndia

Kolkata’s iconic double-decker buses were phased out in the early 90s. However, they are set to make a comeback with a new avatar.

As per the reports, the new double-decker buses will be on the roads starting from next month, i.e. March.

The transport department designed the bus bodies in-house and two of them are readied to start operations. These buses will be used for tourist services.

The double-decker services will also be used for public transportation on city routes.

These buses will have an open roof and more such buses will hit the roads if the design is successful.

West Bengal Transport Secretary N S Nigam says that there is no standard design available for these double-decker buses; hence, they have developed their own design.

He said that once the introduced open roof buses are successful, more such buses would be designed by the transport department for transportation.

Double-decker buses were quite common in Kolkata in the past during the era of Raj until the mid-1990s.

However, due to their high maintenance cost, they were phased out. Again, the transport department decided to bring back the buses in a new swankier avatar for the public.

The Calcutta State Transport Corporation (CSTC) is now known as West Bengal Transport Corporation (WBTC).

WBTC used to test different trailer double-decker buses in a few routes. The iconic L-9O is one among them.

Currently, Mumbai has double-decker buses. It is the only city in the country to have such buses in the public transportation fleet. It has nearly 50 such buses at present.

Image Attribution: Srikar Kashyap / CC BY-SA 3.0

Image Reference: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BEST_double_decker_bus_at_CST.jpg