BEST buses

private transportation

GPS tracker

Motor Vehicles Department

Times of India

Crawford Market

Mantralaya

MUMBAIKARS RESPOND

The spike in private transport since 2001 has made it all but impossible forto operate efficiently in the city.Fully funding BEST, using technology to improve the quality of its service and all the goodwill in the world will achieve little if another fundamental issue is not tackled concurrently: the sky-rocketing use ofin Mumbai.As everyone who travels on Mumbai’s roads already knows, more cars and two-wheelers on the road create more traffic jams and longer travel times, which make it extremely difficult, if not impossible for BEST buses to stay on schedule. The average speed of BEST buses has dropped roughly 25 per cent to 12 km/h at peak hours over the last decade and in February this year, BEST buses covered only 167 km a day against their target of 200km. Each bus driver logs 47 km a day compared to 60 in 2001 and the average number of daily trips has slumped too, from a high of 62,301 in 2010-11 to 54,093 in 2016-17. In February 2018, only 48,685 trips were made.You can install aon a bus and display the waiting time at the bus stop, but if a bus is not going to arrive for 30 minutes, commuters that can afford taxis are not going to hang around.The increase in the number of private vehicles over the last decade and a half is particularly disquieting. According to the, in 2001, Mumbai had 10.29 lakh private vehicles on its roads. Fast forward to 2017 and the number of vehicles had tripled to 30.7 lakh. In that time, the number of twowheelers had gone up four times, from 4.4. lakh to 17.7 lakh, and the number of cars had gone up three times from 3.1 lakh to 9.1 lakh. Thanks to app-based cabs, the number of taxis has doubled too.More cars and bikes on the road mean more space is needed for car parking too. In a city with narrow streets, that creates another headache for BEST. “In entire Dharavi I can’t ply,” RJ Singh, Additional General Manager for BEST, said at the round table organised by Mirror on the future of BEST. “94 feet road has become 30 feet road with three levels of parking. There is no space left for buses. BEST is helpless. I used to get so much business there. That is the tragedy. Vehicles have gone up. These things are adversely affecting BEST and these factors cannot be discounted.”The problem isn’t confined to areas where there are slums either. Just last week, Mirror reported on Illegal parking in a narrow lane adjacent to Gol Masjid in Dhobi Talao that caused two BEST buses to get stuck. It took half an hour for the cops to clear the parked cars and get traffic moving again.The problem has become so acute that it has even drawn the attention of the Bombay High Court. Thereported last month that a bench of Justice Naresh Patiland and Justice Girish Kulkarni said the traffic police should remove cars and other vehicles parked between 8 am and 9 pm “in market areas of south Mumbai, including, Kalbadevi and Bhuleshwar, to decongest them. They suggested that the police try this exercise for 2-3 days”.Rising incomes and rising aspirations have produced changes in behaviour too. “Everybody wants comfort,” Singh said. “Youngsters want Ola-Uber. There are shareautos and share-taxis. Thousands of people are going in share autos. It is a convenient mode of transport for them. Where is the scope for BEST?”So without incentivising people to get out of their cars and into buses, increasing ridership will remain a pipe dream. “What are the ways in which we are trying to curb use of private transport?” Hussain Indorewala, a professor at the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies, said.There are two answers to that question. The first is to make public transport so convenient and cheap that people prefer it to taking cars. The second is to raise the cost of using private transport. Currently, Mumbai city does not charge for parking on the streets, which has led not only to doubleparking but sometimes even triple-parking on roads, which cause endless traffic snarls.“Space management is the most important thing for cars and buses,” transportation expert Ashok Datar said. There must be a price for cars and a price for buses. And there must be bus priority. Wherever there is an option, we must use buses.”Former DG of police, P S Pasricha, cautioned that Mumbai could not just import solutions from other cities because Mumbai has its unique challenges. “We have geographical constraints. Some things that have been successful elsewhere may not work here. We have to work out depot management, rescheduling routes, how to manage space.” By way of example, he pointed out that creating a bus lane on Marine Drive was possible, but at Babulnath, four lanes merge into two and taking one lane away for buses was not practical because it would create a jam in the other laneHowever, Datar challenged the notion that cars are a given and that solutions for BEST must avoid inconveniencing those who travel by car. “Why do we have to make sure cars go but say buses may or may not go?” He believes that the movement of buses must be given priority if people are to be weaned away from their cars. He also wants a parking charge that accurately prices the use of space in the island city. That would make car owners think twice about whether it is worth it to take their car out every day. Of course, this would only work if there is a robust public transport option available instead.Fellow transportation expert A V Shennoy agreed with Datar that BEST must be given priority but argued that BEST had not pushed for this. He also pointed out that BEST cannot increase the speed of its buses on its own but requires the assistance of the traffic police. Keeping cars and taxis from using the lanes and parking in them was something only the police can control.Ashish Chemburkar, the BEST committee chairperson, said it was important for the police to support BEST but they rarely received that support. He cited the example of a bus lane BEST set-up from CST to. “The problem was taxies were parked in the lane,” he said. “Because our conductors are on the spot and it takes time to notify the traffic police and for them to come, we asked the traffic police commissioner to give us the power to fine them. But nothing happened.”On the subject of bus lanes, BMC commissioner Ajoy Mehta was in favour but offered two concerns. The first is that such lanes must be created carefully as they will disrupt traffic. “Still, I have said that even at the cost of some disruption, we must create dedicated bus lanes,” he said. In addition, creating these lanes would have to account for metro construction, which has eaten up road space. “Already one or two lanes are blocked. If you block another, there could be chaos. We need to look at it carefully,” he said.His second concern was for the frequency of buses. “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.”If bus lanes are introduced, he said, there must be a large number of buses using them. “If people see buses zipping past them, they will think, 'why am I am waiting in traffic?'”Personally, Mehta said he also favours a congestion tax, "as long as there is public transport to compensate and there must be parking space. So, we need to do these two things simultaneously," he said.Likewise, buses should get priority at train stations. Acting as a feeder service should be an easy win for BEST but here too they were losing out because of shared rickshaws. Binoy Mascarenhas, the head of integrated urban transport at WRI India, said it was ridiculous that at Bandra and Kurla stations, hundreds of shared rickshaws come and go, creating traffic bottle necks. “It is a no-brainer that a bus will handle this demand in a much more efficient manner.” What’s more, he pointed out that the shared rickshaw stand was closer to the station than the bus stand. “The first thing you are hit with is the line that takes you to the shared auto stand. You have to walk to the bus stand. Why can’t you flip that?”Shashank Rao, the BEST union leader, is also the leader of one of the auto-rickshaw unions, According to him, it is “illegal autos” that are causing the problems at stations and not registered auto-drivers. He argued that he had even reported the nuisance to the traffic police and in one instance had been told by a police officer that nothing could be done because these auto-drivers beat up the cops who try to restore order.Mehta was also confident that BEST could use technology to take on app-based cab operators. “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.”Singh, the additional GM, said BEST was already in the process of building an app and having GPS tracking, and that these technologies should be rolled out in six to eight months.However, entrepreneur Chetan Temkar, who creates mobile apps to improve accessibility, was skeptical of BEST’s readiness and willingness to introduce these technologies. He said he had asked for data on the buses timings and routes but was rebuffed on the grounds that making this data public would anger commuters.Still, the main users of BEST are those who find app-based cabs too expensive. “I can take a cab but others can’t afford it. I see them waiting for hours,’ said Shivani Amin, a psychology student at Ruia College. “There is no medium for them to communicate with the government or officials. We can be really inconsiderate.”Her friend and fellow Ruia student, Gayatri Godbole, said she preferred taking the bus to college over taxis “because it is affordable for me. I am a student. I don’t earn yet. I don’t want to pay Rs 50 to go school and another Rs 50 back.” What bothers her was the poor frequency of buses on her route, and how crowded they were as a result. “I am afraid to get on a crowded bus. It comes with its own drawbacks,” she said.Perhaps the most important benefit of increased ridership for BEST would be the decrease in air pollution. This is the primary concern for author, Kiran Nagarkar, who feels that this issue is not being taken seriously enough. “What are you rationalising in terms of health? Bull! The children are in severe danger but I don’t know how they are addressing it all,” he said.Urmi Kenia, a city planner from the Urban Research and Design Institute, argued that the “objective should be to reduce pollution and to do that public transport has to take priority over private,” she said. Or you charge private transport high rates and subsidise public transport.”She believes more people would use buses if there was better co-ordination between the different modes of transport in the city and pointed out the new Development Plan passed by the BMC has no mention of traffic corridors or how trains, buses, ferries and the metro connect. “Five different authorities working in the transport sector in the city and they don’t talk to each other,” she said.All those at the conference made it clear they are not anti-car or against private transport. There is space for cars, taxis, rickshaws and buses on Mumbai’s roads. But for that space to be used properly and effectively, the bus system has to come first, especially since putting it first would bring a range of societal benefits that would benefit those who don’t use the BEST as well.“People of Mumbai are entitled to a world-class transport service,” Rao said. If you spend Rs 5,000 crore on this service, you are going to get cleaner air, you are going to reduce congestion, have a better lifestyle, better productivity, and a longer life.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------of BEST cannot be resolved just by providing it some sort of relief. Be it subsidies, grants or redevelopment of surplus land. One has to remember that most commuters are ready to pay if the services are in time. There has to be a multi-pronged approach for routes which are obstructed or congested due to construction activities such as Metro project. The desired number of trips cannot be undertaken on such routes, and there is bound to be a shortfall resulting in losses. This can be compensated by hiring buses to schools falling on such routes. Mumbai remains the only metro city in the country where we don’t have a dedicated AC transport. BEST must take initiatives to start services from airport to Thane/Navi Mumbai/Colaba at a fixed fare of Rs 200 at dedicated hours. To begin with, it can launch a service between 11 pm and 6 am from international terminus. Commercial utilisation of surplus space in depots may be prioritised for BMC and other government departments, which are short of space and/or are functioning from rented premises.Mumbai Mirror’s campaign to save BEST by inviting experts and stakeholders to a round- table discussion to find ways and means to make the troubled transport service viable and productive. BMC, which is one of the richest municipal corporations in Asia, is capable of running BEST with subsidy. BEST is a public utility and whether it makes profit or not is secondary. It is an essential public transport service in Mumbai, covering almost every corner of the vast city and even beyond. A large number of people are dependent on its services, which are affordable and efficient. The city needs BEST and we must help it come out of the mess. Now, it’s up to Municipal Commissioner Ajoy Mehta to decide the fate of this premier bus service.encouraging to hear BMC Commissioner Ajay Mehta promising a vibrant BEST. However, the scope of his vision seems to be limited to South Mumbai and the ‘business districts’. He wants to put AC buses on dedicated routes, but only in ‘business districts’. As if, these areas of Mumbai form a separate district altogether. Also, he thinks that the main competition to BEST buses comes from Ola and Uber. Maybe true of South Mumbai, but in the suburbs, it is the ‘share auto’. Autos are not even allowed into South Mumbai; but the suburban traffic is clogged with cars and autos. There seems to be no limit on the number of autos. ‘Share autos’ are now really undercutting the BEST buses by parking in front of bus stands and aggressively soliciting passengers. If you request them to park elsewhere, they become belligerent.Most of the population of Mumbai is surely in the suburbs. Unless the BMC. and BEST turn their gaze here, the suburbs are sure to be exploited once again. Not only the BMC commissioner, but also the auto-rickshaw unions need to address these issues to ensure a better life for the majority of Mumbaikars.understand how such educated officials cannot take quick decisions in bringing the sinking company out of the woods. They don’t want to give up land and control. Give each depot to a developer to build and manage, for a price, multi-storey public parking blocks and a floor for hawkers. The ground remains as bus depot. This gives revenue to BEST, relieves parking woes and eases traffic. Also, hawker discord can be resolved and quick shopping to the public adds convenience and relieves footpath space for walking. It will decrease jaywalking.train is a lifeline for an average Mumbaikar, BEST is second life for many. Worldwide, bus or train travel is subsidised not because people must use it but to dissuade them from using their own cars – a move that helps in reducing both traffic congestion and pollution.BEST, which has lost its sheen because of mismanagement, was never in dearth of customers. BEST must ask itself a question – if private operators can make it run successfully why can’t it? BEST must be run like a private entity with a social cause. It should rather increase double decker buses instead of phasing them out. BEST has a large land pool, which may be utilised for transport parks or hubs for commercial use. With the raging debate on restructuring BEST operations, I must thank Mumbai Mirror which has single-handedly highlighted the need to revamp this public transport.needs is professional management. In the present setup, BEST is being managed like a department of an electricity company. So first thing to be done is separate the transport wing from the electricity company and convert it into a distinct entity, preferably a public limited company, wholly owned by the state government, BMC and MMRDA. This should have been done after the electricity wing was stopped from subsidising the transport wing.The company should have a proper setup to market the various services to the public, what BEST lacks today is marketing. The days of monopoly may be over, but BEST’s work culture is still dominated by it.