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Mumbai: BEST comfort for your journey to home?

With 32 lakh daily passengers, the newly inducted 21-seater AC mini buses may witness rush during peak hours

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Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray inaugurated five BEST AC mini buses at Colaba on Monday
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The much talked about small air-conditioned buses of Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) are here, but the question remains whether it can take the load during peak hours.

Inaugurated by Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray at Electric House in Colaba on Monday, these five buses have a capacity of only 28 (21 seaters and 7 standees). Deployed on feeder routes connecting housing societies with railway stations, these buses will provide last mile connectivity to lakhs of commuters across the city and its suburbs.

However, BEST officials agree that there might be a rush during peak hours considering the size of these buses.

"With a drop in fares, the number of daily passengers has gone up from 22 lakh to 32 lakh now," said BMC Commissioner Praveen Pardeshi. This is why the undertaking will induct 1,000 more buses by January. These will ply mainly on feeder routes and cater to lakhs of passengers without causing rush inside these small buses.

The fares of these AC buses will start from Rs 6. Each bus comes with a luggage rack along with medical kits

Once registered with RTO, the buses will start operating within a week. More such buses will be added to the fleet in October, November, and December. On Monday, the BEST committee passed the proposal of getting 500 such AC buses running on diesel. They will pass another proposal of getting 500 AC CNG buses.

"In the first phase, we will get 6,000 such buses on wet lease. Gradually we intend to increase the number to 10,000. We will retain the 3,337 buses that BEST owns in our fleet," said Surendra Bagde, general manager of BEST Undertaking.

As per claims of BEST officials, these buses can ply through the narrowest roads and will emerge as a tough competitor to share autos and taxis and even app-based cab aggregators. With a hike in parking fines, the menace of illegal parking has been brought under control which has helped improve bus speed and punctuality, claimed the officials.

At present the average speed of a BEST bus is 11-12 kmph.

"There has been a 5-10% improvement in the speed. We want to take it to 20%," added Pardeshi. "These fines were not a source of revenue. The whole point was to help the movement of buses."

Meanwhile, the BMC will give another Rs 400 crore to BEST in the coming days. Until now, the civic body has given Rs 1,200 crore to the undertaking, of which 30% was used to pay off gratuity to BEST employees. The remaining amount has been used to pay off debts arising out of bank loans.

PLANS AHEAD

 On Monday, the BEST committee passed the proposal of getting 500 such AC buses running on diesel. They will pass another proposal of getting 500 AC CNG buses
 The fares of these AC buses will start from Rs 6. Each bus comes with a luggage rack along with medical kits
 BEST officials claim that these buses can ply through narrow roads and will emerge as a tough competitor to share autos and taxis and even app-based cab aggregators
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