Trams bleed red,losses mount

The trams in the city are tired,and are bleeding too. According to a standing committee report on transport tabled recently in the Assembly...

The trams in the city are tired,and are bleeding too. According to a standing committee report on transport tabled recently in the Assembly,of the 272 trams under the Calcutta Tramways Company (CTC),only 99 are plying in the city and the state is incurring huge losses with 90 to 95 per cent of them having been aged.

While the CTC earned Rs 6.41 crore in revenue in 2007-08,it spent around Rs 6.45 crore on repairs,besides a loss of Rs 1.52 crore it incurred in depreciation and another Rs 4.61 crore it paid for electricity. The transport department should increase the number of trams and restructure the services to cut losses up to 40 per cent, said a committee member.

The report said if 300 modern trams are made operational,the revenue could be raised to Rs 52.50 crore.

The report suggested that of the 272 trams,at least 150 should be immediately taken up for modernisation on the lines of European models while for the rest,a global tender should be floated for inviting investment.

Since concretisation of the tram tracks has compelled the state government to run only 99 of the 272 trams,the committee stressed the need to complete the tram-track projects in the state.

The committee also recommended that defunct trams that take up majority of space in the seven tram depots and four bus-cum-tram depots should be auctioned and 250 trams should start running in a few years. It called for setting up electronic ticket vending machines to curb ticket printing cost.

A master plan has also been suggested to modernise the tram depots and rent some unused floors for commercial business to raise money while using the trams to gain advertisements and create a permanent repair workshop for trams.

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