In what could well be a lesson for other civic bodies, the Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) managed to get 10 new air-conditioned buses for the city and that too for free.
In what could well be a lesson for other civic bodies, the Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) managed to get 10 new air-conditioned buses for the city and that too for free.
These will add to the already existing fleet of 10 air-conditioned buses that the civic body’s transport wing already has.
In an exclusive interaction with DNA at its office on Thursday, RA Rajeev, TMC commissioner, said the corporation has managed to seal the deal between the bus supplier and civic body. All the civic authorities will have to do is offer advertising space to the supplier in return.
Rajeev, who spent over two hours answering questions on Thane’s infrastructure, water supply, transport and solid waste management, pointed out how the Thane Municipal Transport (TMT) is on its way to becoming a profitable venture. “When I took over, the daily earning was around Rs12 lakh. Now, it has risen to Rs20 lakh.”
Astonishingly, TMT, which is always considered as the less preferred transport mode, has put BEST, the richest transport department of the neighbouring Mumbai, out of competition.
Citing an example of the Kopri-Borivli route, Rajeev said that all 10 air-conditioned buses running on the route are packed and the city commuters prefer to travel in TMT buses.
He said that for BEST the cost of operation is high as the buses have to be parked outside the Thane limit and then brought back to Thane to commence the trip. This, eventually, increases the operation cost and the direct fallout is on the ticket fare.
From Kopri to Borivli, a passenger travelling on a TMT bus pays Rs40 while BEST charges Rs50 for the same distance although there is no difference in comfort, he added.
He said that when he took over, TMT was almost like a bottomless pit and it was essential for him to plug a lot of leakages in the system. The condemned buses were put on e-auction and that fetched double the money for the transport body compared to previous physical auctions. Then, he identified almost 80 workers who were on the pay roll but never worked in the department and they were sacked on one day’s notice. His office apparently came down heavily on the corruption thus plugging many leakages in the system, Rajeev claimed.
Describing on the system of moving people from one place to another rather than concentrating on moving vehicles from one place to another, he said that his civic corporation is ready to give a separate lane for the public transport and also a separate land for cyclists.
But he was cautious and added, “To get a visible improvement, the government and locals have to give him a period of minimum three years to achieve the set goal.”
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