Munima Sultana

Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BRTC) has planned to launch articulated buses on Joydevpur-Airport route from March as 10 out of 50 vehicles are now in its Gazipur depot.

Officials said the corporation has already started providing training to staff to launch the first of this kind buses on the above said route.

"We are expecting 20 more articulated buses to arrive in the country by a month. So we can start the new bus service in the first week of March," said BRTC director (Technical) Abdullahel Karim.

He said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is expected to inaugurate it.

The officials said the Joydevpur-Airport route has been chosen after a meeting in the Communications Ministry to avoid hazard of taking turn as the sophisticated buses need a wider space to take a turn for having two rigid sections linked by a pivoting joint.

The BRTC started importing 50 articulated buses under a project which was taken under the Indian US $ 1.2 billion line of credit.

The ministry officials said, after the arrival of the rest articulated buses, comparatively more straight routes like Motijheel to Mohammadpur may be included in the service.

The articulated vehicles are mostly a single deck bus comprising two rigid sectors linked by a pivoting joint to increase the vehicle capacity for none passengers. The capacity of articulated buses is around 150 with both sitting and standing arrangement.

The ministry officials said though this kind of buses have been imported to add those to bus rapid transit (BRT) service, the ministry is yet to take decision on these imported buses in this regard.

Under the BRT project, articulated buses will be introduced in dedicated two lanes from the existing lanes from Joydevpur to Sadarghat via Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport. The communications ministry has been conducting studies to remove barriers of road space and turning points for plying articulated buses under BRT services, but the BRTC does not have any study to introduce its buses.