Fifty low-floor swanky buses were today added to the cluster bus service which was rolled out in the city on the lines of those in London and Paris. With induction of the 50 buses, the number of buses under the cluster I fleet has gone up to 100. The first cluster service, operated by a private entity, was launched in May.

Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and Transport Minister Arvinder Singh Lovely flagged off the buses at a function. All the low-floor orange coloured buses have an on board passenger information system similar to that of Delhi Metro, GPS, temperature reader, clock, and electronic display board.

The Transport Minister said around 1,000 cluster buses would be plying under the cluster service in the city by the end of the year. He further said cluster two and three would be launched within two to three months.

"All formalities have already been completed. Four parking places would be provided for the parking of these cluster buses," he added. The first cluster, being run by Star Bus Pvt Ltd, will have a total of 231 buses including around 20 air conditioned ones.

In 2009, the Delhi government had divided nearly 650 bus routes across the city into 17 clusters -each omprising profitable and non-profitable routes and decided to give each cluster to a private operator. Three corporate entities were already given contract to operate the services in five clusters. (More) PTI MPB

The cluster bus service was envisaged to replace the 'killer' Blueline fleet, which has almost been phased out from the capital. The Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) currently operates around 6,500 buses, including 4,000 low-floor buses.

Officials said DTC will operate 40 per cent of the buses in every cluster, while the private entity shall operate the remaining ones. The bus operation, will be based on a 'Unified Time Table' which is being developed by Delhi Integrated Multi-modal Transit System Ltd (DIMTS), which conceived the new model of cluster service.

Lovely said the new buses would operated between Ambedkar Nagar and ISBT Anand Vihar (Route No 469). He further said that the Passenger Information System (PIS) would be installed at each and every bus queue shelters to provide the commuters real time information of buses plying on the particular routes.

The work relating to the installation of PIS is already going on and around 500 bus queue shelters would be covered in the first phase in South and Central Delhi. "The commuters would be able to know at what time their buses will arrive," he said, adding that conductors of all the buses would soon be equipped with Electronic Ticketing Machines (ETM).

He said as all the buses would be equipped with GPS tracking and monitoring device, commuters will also be able to get real-time information about running of the buses through a dedicated website and SMS facility.