BY YANNIS-MARIOS PAPADOPOULOS
Six new Setra coaches with camouflage stickers are currently on the road across Europe. Some of the high and super high banners feature brightly coloured paint and stickers with fancy names such as Cleo, Leyla, Lima or Zera – the names of the colours chosen for the paint job.
The vehicles are tested between minus 40 and plus 40 degrees Celsius, sometimes empty and sometimes loaded with dummies filled with water and sandbags. The tests focus on the innovative assistance systems and their interaction, the new components, the effects of extreme humidity and the extreme topography. All these elements have also long been simulated virtually and tested intensively in test benches.
However, Daimler Buses’ test department always thoroughly checks the results of these tests in practice. The test engineers call what these Setra coaches are undergoing a comprehensive test, which is always the case when vehicles involve several new products.
The next generation of Setra coaches – ComfortClass and TopClass 500 – will be launched during 2022.
52 million. from the Public Investment Programme (PIP) to KTEL SA and KTEL
With an amendment-addendum to the draft law of the Ministry of Development and Investment on the modernization of the Union’s rules on consumer protection, the Ministry of Transport has allocated additional funds to support the investments of the public transport operators KTEL SA and KTEL of n. 2963/2001.
Specifically, for the planned aid (construction, extension of buildings, purchase of equipment for the bus stations), the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport is making available the unused balance, up to the amount of twenty-two million euros, which has already been credited for this purpose, and an additional amount of thirty million euros from the Public Investment Programme.
The amounts are allocated, as a priority, to satisfy applications submitted from 1.1.2016 or until 31.12.2022 for the above investment aid.
The financing of the above-mentioned investment programmes is as follows:
- To support investments for the modernisation – in general – of bus stations and for the purchase of equipment for them, an amount of four thousand four hundred euros (4,400) per bus of the K.T.E.L.L. concerned is available. This support may not exceed fifty percent (50%) of the total cost of the project. In order to support investments relating to the replacement of urban and intercity buses owned by KTEL S.A. or its shareholders, the following shall be made available:
(i) Thirty percent (30%) of the purchase price thereof, if new or up to one year old from the year of manufacture of the chassis, not including that year, without being in circulation.
(ii) Ten percent (10%) of the purchase price thereof, if used and within five (5) years of the year of manufacture of the chassis, not including that year.
(iii) In the case of a merger of two or more C.T.E.L., one or more regional units or C.T.E.L. and a municipal enterprise, provided that all the C.T.E.L. of the regional unit or regional units or the individual island or at least all the interurban C.T.E.L. participate in the merger, the rate of aid in the case of point (1) for the purchase of new buses shall be thirty-five percent (35%) and in the case of point (ii) for the purchase of second-hand buses fifteen percent (15%).
These aids also include the buses of the unfrequented lines, as provided for in the provisions of Decree 967/1979 (A 272)’.
