BEST buses show increased revenues: GM

MUMBAI: With recently introduced measures showing increased revenues, the General Manager of the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport Undertaking (BEST) believes that the bus division of the organisation may overcome its financial deficit within the next two years.

There had been an increase in the number of commuters and earnings between August and October this year when compared to the last year, while expenditure had been brought down for the three-month period, General Manager of the BEST Uttam Khobragade said on Wednesday.

The changed pattern, if continues, will help bring down the huge losses and the transport division could be self sustaining soon, he said.

The BEST, which provides the only public bus service in the financial capital with its nearly 4,000-strong fleet, has had its transport division in the red financially for many years now.

According to statistics from the BEST, their daily earnings in October this year was Rs 221.04 lakh, up almost 7 lakh for the same month last year. Daily costs for the same month had come down almost by Rs 25 lakh.

Khobragade denied allegations that bus services on certain routes had been stopped. "In some cases where we found that there were multiple bus services on the same route we have pulled off one of them in order to optimise services."

For such cases the frequency of buses on these routes had been increased to deal with the situation, he added.

However, Khobragade admitted that in some cases bus frequencies had been reduced during non-peak hours to optimize operations.