Delhi Metro approached Supreme Court for 15,000 e-autos

The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) approached the Supreme Court (SC) for relaxation of three-wheeler permits in Delhi as Metro plans to deploy 15,000 electric autorickshaws in its feeder fleet to give a boost to the last mile connectivity.

Recently, on Behalf of DMRC, The Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA) announced that it will submit a report before the Supreme Court to take approval for plying more than 15,000 e-autos from Delhi Metro Stations.

Delhi Metro

DMRC had filed an affidavit for approval of 15,000 e-autos to offer last-mile connectivity from 184 Delhi metro stations in Delhi and already existed e-rickshaws can be run only on selected routes.

To this, the apex court appointed a committee which included stakeholders, transport department and the Union Ministry of road transport and highways asked them to provide a framework for operating e-autos stating management of e-autos charging points and fares and plans for battery disposal.

At current, the fleet consists of 174 non-AC MIDI buses and around 1,000 e-rickshaws operating for 11 Metro stations across Delhi-NCR. Metro has also tied up with Ola and Uber cab aggregators but there were some issues rising in assisting the passengers in booking the cabs and autos.

DMRC Managing Director Mangu Singh

The DMRC Managing Director Mangu Singh told that “We are planning to scale up the number of e-rickshaws to 5,000. But we are also looking at e-autos. There is a qualitative difference between the two. Autos provide more comfort. But there is a cap on the number of autos in Delhi. We have moved the Supreme Court for allowing 15,000 autos,”

The EPCA member emphasized that the e-autos are suitable for last-mile connectivity from Delhi Metro Stations but a regulatory framework must be there to operate them in the city. Proper care must be taken for the disposal of the batteries, so that the e-autos drivers may won’t end up with any domestic waste which may result in an environmental hazard.

EPCA also said that DMRC must provide guidelines to monitor these vehicles and a control room set up will help in this regard. Parking of e-autos should also be planned.

According to the DMRC officials, the deployment of these e-autos will be in a phased manner with lithium-ion batteries. These e-autos will run on GPS based monitoring so that they can be tracked and run on designated areas. To charge these vehicles charging stations are provided at the depots.

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