The Brihanmumbai Electric Supply & Transport (BEST) officials will monitor the application-based bus services that have sprung up in the city.
A number of mobile apps such as Cityflo, rBus and Office bus are now available on Play Store and have been posing a threat to the BEST bus services.
The BEST has been struggling to keep its 36-lakh loyal passengers following two consecutive hikes in February and April this year that led to around two lakh of its passengers shifting to other modes of transport.
BEST officers will be stationed in the island city on routes where it is suspected that application-based buses are ferrying passengers, “As of now the application-based companies have told us that they are only testing the application and not actually providing private bus services to anyone. This is fine for now but we are doing our homework and if they are found to be providing bus services via the application, we will lodge an official complaint against them,” said the official.
This is the latest grievance in the transport sector following the two strikes called by black and yellow taxi unions in the past six months against application based taxi-services.
Earlier, the BEST registered a complaint with the RTO about private buses that ferry passengers for short distances after they are done with their assigned services for the day. “Many of these private buses are assigned to pick up and drop employees from their work place to home and run empty once the task is finished. So, to make some extra money on the side, they poach BEST passengers offering to drop them at their destinations,” said an official on condition of anonymity.
When contacted BEST general manager Jagdish Patil said that it had registered a complaint against the private buses that have been ferrying passengers illegally. “Short-distance bus services in the island city cannot be run by anyone but the BEST, so we have registered a complaint at the RTO,” he said.
