Mumbai: The average waiting period for a commuter at a Brihanmumbai Electric Supply & Transport (BEST) bus stop has increased by 20 minutes in the last six-months due to a decrease in the number of buses on the road, as compared to last year. The BEST fleet is currently short by 204 buses. These were some of the findings of a 15-day survey conducted by BEST at its bus stops during the peak morning and evening rush hours, from Monday to Friday, in April.
The shrinking numbers of available buses is clearly seen in the undertaking’s own records accessed by this newspaper, that shows that it had had 4,167 buses in its fleet last year, which has dropped to 3, 963 buses this year. This gap is because a number of these buses have been scrapped as they have completed their lifespan of 15 years.
Officials who were a part of the survey, included the operational staff of the undertaking, most of who are qualified transport planners and engineers themselves. One of these officials said, “There was a time when we had a bigger fleet so we could run a bulk of the buses during peak hours on high footfall routes. But now we have a smaller pool of buses at our disposal and invariably the frequency of the buses at the stops will decrease.”
This decrease in the number of buses is the reason for the increase in the waiting period at bus stops. “Many commuters have come up to our ticket collectors, and even into our depot offices, complaining that there are no buses available for periods as long as 25 minutes,” he said.
Officials said that heavy routes like Churchgate/CST to Nariman Point, have hardly been affected unlike the Vashi to Bandra station route or the Kala Nagar to Sion route, which have been seeing the cascading effects of the dwindling buses. The undertaking has scrapped 181 buses this year alone, with the highest number seen in March, when 50 buses were removed from service. They also had to cancel their order of 118 buses out of 303, as recently as in the month of May this year, due to lack of funds, further aggravating the situation.
