THE OPTIMAL BUS-TO-PEOPLE RATIO IN MMR

MMR is striving hard to hit the optimal bus-to-people ratio like the rest of the pockets in the country. Prajakta Chavan studies the local STUS to gauge their realistic chances of hitting the sweet spot.

- Prajakta Chavan

The State Transport Undertakings (STUs) in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) have long shared their intent to enhance the fleet size. By doing so, they will improve the buses per 1000 people ratio to compare better with global benchmarks. For instance, Mumbai’s BEST Undertaking has a fleet of 3,052 buses which makes it one bus per 4,193 people. By 2024-25, the Undertaking is aiming to better the ratio to one bus per 1576 people. To attain this, the fleet size must be 8,000 buses. These can be a mix of owned cum wet lease as is the near equal distribution (1,381 owned and 1671 wet-leased) as per recent records. The 33 lakh daily ridership will only increase going forward with such an expansion and bring along the much-needed prioritisation of public over private modes of transportation. “We have already issued a tender of 2,100 new e-buses of which 20 have arrived, and the delivery for the rest has crossed the time limit. Besides, we are looking forward to procuring an additional 2,400 buses. With this we will have a fleet size of over 5,000 buses in the next two to three years to serve the commuters,” explained Sunil Jadhav, Chief Manager (Traffic) at BEST Undertaking.