$10 million spent on procurement of new buses in Astana

$10 million have been spent on procurement on new buses in Astana, Tengrinews.kz reports citing head of Astana Department of Passenger Transport and Car Roads Rashid Amanzhulov. “83 new buses worth 1.5 billion tenge ($10 million) have been bought since the beginning of 2012. The plan is to buy additional 20 buses before the end of the year,” Astana administration’s press-service cites Amanzhulov as saying. According to the press-service the total of 243 new buses worth 4.6 billion tenge ($30.7 million) were purchased in the last 3 years (2009-2012). Old buses are gradually taken out of exploitation as they are being replaced by new ones. The press-service also writes that the city bus routes are being optimized to reduce doubling of routes and decreased the number of routes along the streets overloaded with traffic. Currently the total number of public buses in Astana stands at 1,018. 778 buses work daily. The overall length of their routes makes 2,442km. The capacity of the daily passengers transportation is 515 thousand people and 981 bus stops.