City gets first route map at Kalanagar bus stop in pilot project that aims to make BEST travel simpler.

Chamber of Commerce

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In a first, a suburban bus stop will display a map of the routes taken by the BEST buses that ply through it. An acrylic advertising board beside the Kalanagar bus stop in Bandra East encases the map on which the Central, Western and Eastern lines have been assigned three colours. Bus numbers plying on each line are also listed on the map.The bus route map is an initiative of Mumbai Environmental Social Network (MESN), a non-governmental organisation that addresses the city’s traffic woes. The project has been funded by the Bombayand Industry and was rolled out on Thursday at a bus stop managed by the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA). Bus stops in Mumbai are looked after by either the BMC or the MMRDA.According to Ashok Dattar, chairman, MESN, 20 maps are expected to come up across city bus stops, including at Andheri, Dadar, Chembur and tourist-heavy Flora Fountain in Fort. The BEST has 4,000 stops in the city.“We want to ‘sell’ bus stops to the public. This is a strategy to attract new commuters to buses and make bus travel less confusing.” There seems to be a need for this. In the past decade, while the number of passenger trips per day has increased from 55 lakh to 70 lakh in Mumbai’s trains, the number has remained constant at 40 lakh for BEST buses.This means that the number of people using BEST buses - by buying tickets or using a pass - hasn’t grown. According to Dattar, lack of information at bus stops, on routes and connectivity to the nearest railway station, for instance, discourages more commuters from taking the bus. They don’t face this problem in trains, as there is a system of information dissemination in place.The Kalanagar route map lists the 18 buses and shows the five bus routes that ply from the stop. It also displays the train tracks, and the stations in the vicinity. Pramod Purandikar, a 47-year-old surveyor who was waiting at the stop for bus number 473, offeredon the map. “The names of the stations need to be in a larger font.”Dattar said the map will be revised soon as a new bus route will be started at the Kalanagar bus stop from July 1. “A new route, C 198, from Sewri to Mira Road, will start on the Central line. The map will have to be modified. They should print the date of publication, since we update routes often,” said Prasad Dharankar, assistant department manager of the Dharavi bus depot.