The bus services in the city of Calcutta had its start in 1920. But the ‘State Transport Services’ under the Directorate of Transportation, Govt. of West Bengal was established in the form of an organised public sector on 31st July 1948.

The State Transport Services was subsequently transformed as ‘Calcutta State Transport Corporation’ on 15th June 1960 under the Road Transport Corporation Act, 1950. The objective of this change was to provide efficient, adequate, economical and properly coordinated passenger bus service particularly in and around the city of Kolkata and in the state of West Bengal in general.

Till 1966-’67, CSTC nationalised about 90% of the city routes. However, because of acute financial constraints, the Corporation could not meet the ever-increasing passenger demand and the Govt. allowed private operators to operate their buses in the city of Kolkata.

As regards rural bus services, CSTC introduced the operation of its first long distance bus service (LDS) on the route-- ‘Calcutta to Digha’ --on and from 14-04-1968 mainly to meet the increased demand from the tourists. Later, to mitigate the passengers’ demand of interior parts of different districts including the district Headquarters, CSTC started to connect different areas/districts with Kolkata by introducing more long distance bus services.

Over the years, with rapid expansion of long route net work, CSTC has been able to connect a large number of remote areas in the southern part of the State having no or poor railway connections. In northern part of the State, CSTC has also been operating a good number of bus services on the routes viz:-Calcutta to Siliguri, Calcutta to Malda, Calcutta to Raigunge, Calcutta to Balurghat, Calcutta to Farakka, Calcutta to Khajuria-Ghat etc. In other words, with the operation of rural bus services on a regular basis, CSTC has been playing a vital role to uplift the rural economy by way of providing an easy accessibility to such areas.