The first CNG bus hit the streets in Kolkata on Monday, more than two decades after those buses started operating in Delhi. Transport Minister Firhad Hakim opened the service himself by driving a CNG bus for the cameras. "Kolkata now has CNG. In the future, the buses will be mainly electric and CNG. This will lower the operating costs of the buses and also reduce pollution," Hakim said after the introduction.
The two buses have been converted to diesel and are operated by the West Bengal Transport Corporation, which has almost 1,000 buses in its fleet & 80 electric buses "The number of electric buses will also increase significantly shortly," said Rajanvir Singh Kapur, Managing Director of WBTC, adding that electric buses have received international recognition from IEA Paris and C40. WBTC later said, "To counter rising fuel prices, transportation in Kolkata is environmentally friendly."
Speaking on June 21, WBTC and Bengal Gas Company Limited have signed a CNG bus fuel contract at the Kasba Transport office, with the minister laying the foundation stone for the first CNG station in Calcutta for government buses. the time in which the CNG station would be operational in six months.
Kolkata has most of the transportation, with motorized boats (many owned by WBTC) and trams (owned by WBTC) serving its people as well. They are quickly dying out: while in Calcutta at the height of its popularity as a means of transport in the 1960s there were 52 tram lines since 2019 only six lines have been operational.