Tata Motors to spruce up maintenance of low-floor buses

NEW DELHI - Tata Motors, the manufacturers of Delhi Transport Corporation’s (DTC) low-floor buses, Thursday said it would tighten the maintenance schedule of the vehicles to avert incidents of fire but contended their buses were not “unsafe”.

Seven low-floor buses, running on compressed natural gas (CNG), have caught fire in the city between Nov 30 and Dec 21. Another low floor bus caught fire in east Delhi Thursday afternoon, making it the eighth such incident in the last 25 days. All the passengers were safely evacuated and no one was hurt.

“Our low floor buses are running on Delhi roads for nearly two years now. Most of those buses have clocked more than 100,000 km. Now on the basis of our experience, we are tightening the maintenance schedule of these buses,” Ravi Pisharody, president of Tata Motors’ commercial vehicle business unit, told reporters here.

“We take responsibility for maintenance of our buses. But our buses are not unsafe,” he said.

At present, there are 950 Tata Motors-built low floor buses on Delhi roads.

“Right now we are handling 10 depots of DTC in the city. The existing team of Tata Motors engineers has been reinforced from four engineers to 24 engineers for 10 depots,” Pisharody added.

Of the seven incidents that have taken place between Nov 30-Dec 21, in three cases the buses had caught fire because of problem in brake shoes of rear tyres of the bus.

“A committee set up by Delhi government, of which we are also a part of, is already investigating the causes behind the incidents. There are two to three possible causes for that particular problem. They are already being addressed by our mechanics,” he said.

Pisharody, however, refused to reveal those causes.

On allegations of fault in design of the bus, he said: “There is no inherent design or manufacturing issue in the bus. The maintenance procedures are also being strengthened.”

Asked if Tata Motors had blamed poor condition of Delhi roads for the recent problems in their buses, Pisharody said: “We have never said that Delhi roads are bad.”

He said as per discussions with DTC, the company was carrying out a comprehensive check up of the low floor buses which will be completed by the end of January 2010.

The check up would include checking of bus’s CNG, electrical and mechanical system. For this check up, the company has deployed 25 engineers and 240 mechanics.

Last week, the Delhi government fined Tata Motors Rs.4 crore (Rs.40 million) for failing to ensure proper maintenance of the low-floor buses.