While the COVID-19 pandemic has seriously undermined the public transportation systems across the world, particularly city-bus-based public transportation, it has also emphasised its importance for millions in India who may not be able to access private modes of commuting. For the already financially strained State Transport Undertakings, it is going to be a long road to recovery. The pandemic may have pushed them into a vicious circle that several of them may find hard to escape. It is therefore a useful time to reflect on our frameworks for public transportation service delivery.In a much-needed stimulus for urban bus-based public transportation, the Union Budget for 2020-21 announced a Rs-18,000-crore scheme that will facilitate the “deployment of innovative public-private-partnership” to procure, operate and maintain 20,000 buses. While the service level benchmark of 50 buses per lakh of population may still be a distant dream for most of our urban areas, we need a wide range of contracting frameworks that may be adapted to the specific requirements of a transport undertaking. Since the advent of JNNURM, variations of two PPP models have been adopted: the Gross Cost Contract (GCC) model and the net-cost contract (NCC) model.In this article, the aim is to add another framework to the spectrum of contracting options available for the cities to choose from: it proposes a public-public-partnership as an effective mode for delivering urban public transportation, where two state run agencies come together for the provisioning of service, based on the experience of Aurangabad.In the GCC model, the revenue risk is borne by the state with the private partner being paid on a per-km basis for procuring, operating and maintaining city buses in the form of a service contract. The revenue function is separated from operations and maintenance through the appointment of a fare collection services agency that is then responsible for ticketing and revenue collection through a separate service contract. In the case of the NCC model, however, the revenue risk is borne by the private partner and no financial outgo is required to be made by the state. On the contrary, the state may even demand royalty for letting the private partner earn revenue through the service.The onus of providing land and depot infrastructure may be on the state across both models. Further, while the control over setting of fare, route selection, service level monitoring may contractually be the same for GCC as well as NCC, wide variations are reported in outcomes primarily because, in the private-partner-led model of NCC, the revenue imperative drives the operations and may skew the service being delivered. The public transportation coverage may then be disproportionately oriented towards high traffic/revenue sectors – an outcome that is antithetical to overall objectives of a public service.While it may appear lucrative to financially strained urban local bodies who may not afford to fund city bus systems, the NCC model has been largely unsuccessful in delivering public transportation. Here, it should be recognised that the gulf between revenue and expenditure is inevitable for a city bus system that operates on the principle of public service. Public transportation systems across the world, from BEST in Mumbai to Transport for London (TFL), incur financial losses. It becomes incumbent for the state then to step in and fund the gap as it constitutes social investment and key to the health of the overall economy.The GCC model has been widely prevalent and even used by State Transport Undertakings (STUs) to open up own operations to limited private sector participation. Delhi Integrated Multimodal Transit System in Delhi, Surat City Bus, Navi Mumbai (Navi Mumbai Municipal Transport), Bhubaneshwar (Bhubaneshwar Puri Transport Service Limited) are some examples.To this spectrum of service delivery models, we may add public-public-partnership – where two agencies owned by the state come together to deliver public transportation service, complementing their strengths and offsetting their weaknesses. The city of Aurangabad in Maharashtra, with a population of over 1.5 million, provides us with an example.The Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) used to operate city buses through the 1990s to early 2000s with a fleet of 100 buses, when the population of the city was less than half a million. The operations were handed over to the urban local body in Aurangabad in 2005, which inducted new buses through a private agency appointed on the lines of the NCC model. The contradictions intrinsic to mixing of revenue function with public service delivery eventually led to the service coming to a halt in 2010, with MSRTC compelled to resume skeletal operations with bare 30 buses. Personal vehicle usage, particularly two-wheelers, increased exponential as the vacuum in public transportation continued till 2019.In January 2019, a new City Bus Service was launched as part of the Smart City project in Aurangabad. With a fleet of 100 buses, it is operated as a joint venture between Aurangabad Smart City Development Corporation Limited (ASCDCL) – a public limited company/special purpose vehicles established to execute Smart City projects in Aurangabad – and MSRTC, which is Maharashtra’s state road transport undertaking. (Note: The author is the deputy CEO of ASCDCL.) While the former had the funds received as part of the Smart City project as well as the institutional flexibility to focus on the priorities of the city, the latter had ready availability of land area, depot infrastructure and trained staff/establishment for overseeing operations.Instead of opting for a private partner, the two agencies entered into a joint venture: MSRTC was responsible for providing land for the depot and other support infrastructure, drivers and conductors, and ASCDCL retained control over fare setting, route selection, service level monitoring, revenue collection through own e-ticketing infrastructure and various digital services for the passengers. ASCDCL pays MSRTC at actuals for the services provided, on a ‘no profit or loss’ basis.There are several advantages that a tie up between two state owned bodies may offer:1. Large STUs own key assets and land areas that may be readily made available for city operations as was the case in Aurangabad;2. Smaller and newer city transport undertakings may benefit from the economies of scale that the massive fleet size of the large STUs like MSRTC offer;3. As an extension of the previous point, large STUs are able to avail diesel at bulk rates which may not be available to a smaller city STU with a modest fleet size;4. Despite the induction of private agencies through PPP models such as the GCC, the good old STUs continue to excel in various physical and service level parameters where they offer unparalleled reliability and service (southern STUs such as APSRTC/TSRTC, BMTC, etc., are some shining examples);5. For the STUs, this arrangement provides a steady cash flow which may be a boon in the current times;6. Except for bus procurement, there is no need for tendering process which saves tremendous amount of time; and7. The availability of the impeccably trained drivers and conductors of STUs – indeed, they may not be able to cut staff costs as aggressively as GCC private operators, but continue to be safer and more reliable.Recently, MSRTC provided its buses to BEST in Mumbai to shore up operations and the arrangement between the two public bodies became a major source of revenue for the former. For BEST, it was cheaper to engage MSRTC than its own per-km cost of operations and allowed it to swiftly scale the fleet size up to address the public transportation need during the pandemic. The success of such an arrangement has been evident in Aurangabad: the “public-public-partnership” City Bus has become very popular in a short span, and was recently recognised by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs as part of the India Smart Cities Awards 2020.Such dovetailing of two state-owned bodies to deliver a public service creates a “win-win” situation for all stakeholders: one that could be harnessed by the cities availing of the central scheme to augment public transport in urban areas.Pushkal Shivam is the deputy CEO of the Aurangabad Smart City Development Corporation Limited, a government-owned special purpose vehicle and the public transport operator in the city of Aurangabad, Maharashtra. The views expressed in this article are personal.