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BEST bet: Key takeaways for city managers

Mumbaikars, unwilling to let the iconic red workhorse of city transport collapse or fall into private hands, raised some tough questions before Municipal Commissioner Ajoy, who answered them at the Mirror round table. He spoke at length about the bus operator’s complex problems, from its falling revenue and popularity to ballooning costs, and laid out his ideas for reviving it.One plan that has generated much controversy requires BEST to wet-lease buses from private players, allow them to bring in their own drivers and operate the bus service under BEST’s colours and control.Mehta tried to assure wary citizens that the civic body was not handing over BEST’s keys to the private sector and simply wanted to make it a financially sound, efficient and convenient bus service, which, with the right push, could even beatand Uber. Here are edited excerpts of his responses:Privatising and privatisation, the definition depends on how you look at it. Are we privatising BEST ticket prices? We are not. Are we privatising bus routes? We are not. We will control prices and routes — we will control everything. But if we can get cheaper buses from outside (through wet leasing), why not?Even for that arrangement, we have inserted clauses to protect our employees. We are saying that look the drivers you [private players] recruit should have domicile of Maharashtra. The first preference should be given to BEST drivers who want to migrate. If their children meet the recruitment requirements, they should be given priority. All new drivers will have to undergo police verification so we are sure of their background and character. We want to ensure there is no damage to the employment market and it is protected.We are trying to do it [wet leasing] very cautiously. There is only that small component of getting buses (from the private sector). Ticket prices, no. Pricing will remain in public hands as it is happening today.Participants at the round table listen to Ajoy Mehta’s opening remarks; Union leader Shashank Rao in discussionwith Mirror editor Meenal BaghelWe have said rationalise. There is no one size that fits all. There will be routes where you will need big buses, routes where you will need mid-sized buses and routes where you will need minibuses. Let us not run routes based on whims, fancies and political considerations. They must be run on merit.Yes, but this is again part of route rationalising. BEST might have to refigure its routes.Yes. Route scheduling is a very dynamic process. You cannot say I have scheduled my route today and it will remain that way for 50 years. It cannot. If a metro route opens up, you may have to rethink your routes. Once you have a public information system, GPS in buses and you are able to log the routes into the system, your route planning will become dynamic. BEST will be able to even change the route every 15 minutes. If there is suddenly a crowd at one place, you can send a bus and start moving people out. That is why we have kept this [route scheduling] in our hand. How many buses will be deployed will be decided by us, not the private sector.(Clockwise from right): Sandhya Gokhale, Hussain Indorewala and Vidyadhar Date; Sucheta Dalal and Shirish Patel talking to Ajoy MehtaAC buses are not the final solution. They should be there in a city like Mumbai, there is a market for AC buses. But schedule routes correctly. Please deploy AC buses where the demand exists. But don’t price yourself out.In the tender of wet leasing of electric buses that we have received, AC electric buses have turned out to be only 10 per cent more (expensive) than diesel buses. This is on the wet leasing route. On our route, it is more expensive. If it just 10 per cent more, we need to seriously look at BEST’s fleet combination. You will get fleet combination flexibility only in wet leasing. If you don’t (go for it), you are saddled with one bus for 15 years.You decide ticket prices, but bring in flexibility in your operations because it helps citizens.Yes, there is no doubt about. There are only two concerns. First, dedicated bus lanes in most parts of the world are created in a greenfield city, a city which is being developed. The way we put railway lines in Mumbai. When you try to put lanes in an existing city, you have to do it a little more carefully. Still, I have said that even at the cost of some disruption, we must create dedicated bus lanes.Most of the roads where a lane can come up, metro work is going on. So already one or two lanes are blocked. If you block another, there could be chaos. We need to look at it carefully.The second concern is that once you have dedicated road space for buses, you should also have that many buses running on the stretch. See what happened in Delhi: bus lanes were created, but there were no buses running on them. People said we are living horribly, using autos and taxis, and now you have put this and buses are not there. You have reduced us to three lanes and made things worse.So we have said suggest a bus lane and have a fairly large number of buses on the lane so people are encouraged to leave their cars. They will see a bus zipping past every two minutes and think: ‘I am stuck in my car in this traffic.’ But if the bus doesn’t come for half an hour and motorists are stuck in traffic, you only end up invoking anger. They will say ‘I will cut the lane and get in’.In the wet leasing tender, we put 450 buses straight in one shot. Let us put them in areas where you want bus lanes so you can get good frequency there.Yes, these things will come with technology. The biggest benefit of an XYZ technology- driven cab is that you can see it on your phone where the driver is and in how much time he will arrive. I cannot do the same thing with the bus currently.My first point of competition is to take on the cabbie on predictability. The second point of competition is going to be frequency. I strongly feel BEST can compete with technology-driven cabs, provided we get our frequency and predictability correct. Once that is in place, there is no way they can stand against us. We will demolish and finish them. There is no doubt in my mind.We are saying the whole fleet should be replaced.Personally, I think there should be a congestion tax. That is my personal opinion. However, you must also have an alternative. You cannot tax and say I will not even provide a bus. You must have public transport to compensate and there must be parking space. So, we need to do these two things simultaneously.█ The BMC budget is about Rs 35,000 crore a year. If at all there is a deficit of Rs 800 crore, in a budget of 35,000 crore, can’t you use this money which is from the people, for the benefit of the people?█ My main concern is the pollution issue. If BEST comes back into the limelight as the best service in India, our grandchildren will have a far better chance of not falling sick█ If you look at other cities around the world, London has a subsidy [for its bus service],has a subsidy andhas a subsidy█ The question is what has the BMC done in the past 20 or 25 years to curb the use of private transport? That is why we are in this situation today█ The point is to improve the quality of life of the citizen█ Space management is the most important thing for cars and buses. There must be bus priority█ Public vs private is a discussion that needs to happen. People are brainwashed into thinking that having a private company is always good. But if a private company can do it, why can’t a public corporation?.█ I am clear on one thing: BMC must give subsidy to the BEST█ Railway, Metro, Bus, Mono-rail, Ferries - there are no strategic plans about where these services connect. BMC should know from where people need to travel, and where they need buses to go█ For a city of 10 million, the budget allocation for BEST is too little█ Why can’t they tell us where each bus is and when it will arrive? We asked for the data but BEST said they would not give the data because people will start fighting with them█ We are hearing all the right things from the BMC Commissioner but what about implementation?█ BEST has to survive not for the good of BEST, but for the long-term benefit of Mumbai█ Everything is not in the hands of BEST. It cannot increase the speed of buses because of the cars. This is in the hands of traffic police█ It is shocking that there is no bus service from the airport to the city. Every other big city in the world has a public transport optionLike local trains, BEST provides an essential service to tens of thousands of Mumbaikars and therefore the BMC cannot pick and choose when and how it wants to financially support it. The first step to end doubts about BEST’s status is to formally declare it an essential service. “When BEST workers protest, you threaten action under the Essential Services Maintenance Act, but when it comes to providing funds, you don’t consider BEST that important,” Shashank Rao, who heads BEST workers’ union said at the round table. Professor Hussain Indorewala said Ajoy Mehta had a package of reforms that he wanted to impose on BEST. “His line appears to be that cut costs and losses and improve efficiency, then I will give you subsidy. That’s not right,” he said.BEST is supposed to be an affordable and convenient bus service, not an enterprise whose sole aim is profit. It’s wrong to expect that BEST should be financially independent. Yes, it should improve its finances, but that cannot be the sole focus. “Right now, the conversation about BEST has become all about money. No one in the BMC is talking about how BEST lost so much ground,” said transportation expert AV Shenoy.One reason why fewer people are relying on buses is that they now take more time to complete even short trips because of traffic snarl-ups, caused primarily by private cars and cabs. To encourage more people to use public transport, BEST should be given special lanes. “Thousands of crores are being spent on roads. Car owners are not paying for it,” said transportation expert Ashok Datar. “There should be priority lanes for buses.” Former top cop PS Pasricha shared a similar view. “We have built the Sea Link and the Freeway, but has BEST benefited from it? Good cities are known for the number of people they move in an hour, not the number of cars,” he said.Experts at the round table were not in favour of dropping any route. Mumbai, they said, needs more bus routes, buses and stops. “Anyone should be able to walk to a bus station anywhere in the city,” Indorewala said. Sandhya Gokhale, from Forum Against Oppression of Women, said the BMC was forgetting about a large section of Mumbai’s population that cannot pay for an auto or taxi. “Workers from the unorganised sector depend completely on public transport,” she said. College student Shivani Amin said: “I have seen daily wagers wait for an hour for a bus. They have no voice, they are unable to complain. We need to think about them before downscaling BEST. Her college mate Gayatri said many students also depended on BEST.One way to get more people to use buses and give up cars is to make BEST trips free or introduce very cheap all-day passes. “You may lose ticket revenue, but you will gain in terms of cleaner air, less congestion and a lower fuel bill,” Rao said.Positions at BEST should not be a “rehabilitation” stint for babus or appointees and there should be more experts on its panel. Author Vidhyadhar Date said at the political level, there had been a terrible decline in understanding of public transport and some measures were needed to change this. Datar said: “Members on the BEST committee should be from fields such as finance, transport and engineering, among others.”