“Over the years,
ridership on the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) buses has
decreased, and slipped further down in February, possibly due to the fare hike.
With yet another round of increase in fares slated to come into force from
Wednesday, the clientele can only get thinner, say experts.How many passengers
has BEST lost over past 2 months? As per transport figures for the months of
January and February, around 3 lakh passengers stopped using the public
transport to their destinations. The data show that in January this year, a
total of 35.77 lakh passengers were ferried by BEST buses daily to various
corners of Mumbai and even outside city limits.”
Mumbai has a bus service that was once its pride. The BEST
service. It was a funny amalgamation of an electric supply company and a Bus
service. The name is actually – Bombay Electric Supply and Transport – hence BEST.
To start with I have no clue why an electric utility company and the bus
transport company must be merged into one. They have no obvious synergies in management
or in supply of raw materials. It’s not like the bus service run electric busses.
I think this was a legacy of the Trams which ran on electricity as I could
understand from this pargraphs.
“The Bombay Tramway
Company Limited was formally set up in 1873. The Mumbai Municipality was given
the right to buy up the concern after the first 25 years or after every period
of 7 years thereafter. After this contract was entered into between the Bombay
Tramway Company and the Municipality, the Government of Mumbai enacted the
Bombay Tramways Act, 1874, under which the Company was licenced to run a
tramway service in the city. The tram-cars were of two kinds-those drawn by one
horse and those drawn by two. In 1905, a newly formed concern, “The Bombay
Electric Supply & Tramways Company Limited?bought the Bombay Tramway
Company and the first electrically operated tram-car appeared on Mumbai’s roads
in 1907. The passing years aggravated the problem of rush-hour traffic and to
ease the situation, double decker trams were introduced in September, 1920.
Mumbai saw its first
bus run on 15th July, 1926. The people of Mumbai received the bus with
enthusiasm, but it took quite sometime before this means of conveyance really
established itself. For several years, it was looked upon as transport for the
upper middle classes. Those were the days when the tram was the poor man’s
transport, carried one all the way from Sassoon Dock to Dadar for a mere anna
and a half, that was nine paise. The bus fare for the same journey was four
annas, that is 25 paise.
…..
As regards BEST’s
electric supply side, in the year 1905, the B.E.S.& T Co.Ltd., commenced
the supply of electrical energy by erecting its own generating station with a
total capacity of 4,300 KW. This was later abandoned in favour of a station of
larger capacity constructed in 1912 at Kussara Basin. This station was closed
down in 1925, after which all the Company’s requirements were obtained in bulk
from M/s. Tata Hydro Electric Power Supply Co.Ltd, With the growth of the
electrical distribution system, difficulties were experienced in the
maintenance of the electrical pressure within the prescribed statutory limits.
The Company than decided to establish two High Voltage Receiving Stations at
Grant Road, and Apollo where large bulk supply transformers provided with
on-load tap changing equipment had to be installed for maintaining regulated
voltage at the consumer’s premises. These two new stations were, however,
actually commissioned in 1949, i.e. after the B.E.S. & T Co.Ltd., was
acquired by the Municipal Corporation.”
So fundamentally a transport company and an electric supply
company being one is an anachronism that has no relevance in the present – but who
knows – twenty or thirty years hence when electric vehicles become a reality –
this may well be back in fashion. The proponents of the electric car often cite
that the gasoline fueled car simply lost a temporary race in the early 1900’s
and this century will only see its rise.
But still – I grew up wondering what BEST meant I remember
still finding it very odd that the two were in one company. But hell. The BEST
services haven’t improved one bit ever since I was a kid. It’s the same buses
and the same conductors. Only the tickets changed. Now the conductor gives you
a thermal paper ticket as opposed to the paper tickets of the era gone by. The
crowd is crazy, the services are erratic – the bus routes are not clear and
nothing really works well. Obviously the service is making losses. They introduced
AC services at the start but only on certain routes. At first they had these
stupid buses which looked like outstation travel buses. Then they moved on to
nicer buses but these very severely limited. The majority of the buses in
operation seem the same from when I wa s achild. To my mind they haven’t moved
anywhere in the last 35 years. The iconic double decker made its exit but
nothing else.
A transport company must understand its relevance every few
years or so and must make adjustments accordingly. There is no point having
large buses running through the day when you clearly have peak and off peak
hours. The city earlier was very clearly structured on the north south axis. The
buses simply had to go up and down. The business district was in the south and
the suburbs were in the north with a large middle class working in the mills
and staying in its vicinity in the centre. The bus routes were infinitely less
complex. Now the complexity of the city has ensured that the conventional
routes won’t work. I remember when Bhakti Park where I stay was coming up. It
is in the middle of nowhere with almost no civilization three kms in either
direction. Why would anyone live there?
But slowly the infrastructure came up. I remember my friends who were
early adopters of the area making representations to the transport undertaking
to start services. The service assured them that service would start if a
certain threshold level of population comes in. That is a classical chicken and
egg. But the BEST played dumb. They should have had smaller buses in operation
with higher frequencies in the morning and evening. These need to be the simple
feeder routes that simply took people and pushed them to the big bus stops or
stations where people could hop off and hop on to their bigger buses which took
them to their offices. The city was expanding on the east west axis and the bus
services were not keeping pace. Why should the service not have efficient bus
services with 20 seaters or even lower. The taxi guys started the share a cab
services but they too are notoriously bad and are available only in certain
places. The transport authority was best placed to handle this.
Also they don’t need to look too further to improve their
services. They simply need to follow the UBER model and fit their buses with a
smart phone. Now people will know exactly where their bus is and figure the
best time to leave home to reach the bus stop to reach their destination. It
can also give expected delays and journey times. There is an inordinately long
time that people wait for their bus – that can simply be cut off.
A simple mapping of people’s journeys and traffic patterns
can render a lot of data on making these routes efficient. But the EBST is
working with its head in the sand. Right now they have resorted to really
stupid measures like putting up posters and urging people to use their
services. What a bum head. People will use services that people value. Period.
Increase value.
Uptill now all it did was believe it was a monopoly and then
it behaved like one. Bad service, bad route planning, bad conductors, bad buses
and a complete mismanagement of crowd. Nobody likes a BEST bus on the road. They
behave like bullies and I have been on the receiving end quite a few times.
My other favorite solution was that instead of putting so
much money on bridges, we should have simply put money on making the bus service
air-conditioned and subsidized that and slowly removed that subsidy. As of now
the bridges are so ill designed and one after the other that that most buses don’t
ply on them. And the road under the bridges are really narrow especially to make
space for the landing and take off that you often find jams near there. This
just compounds matters.
Simply put – the BEST must change itself if it has to stay
relevant. Mumbai took great pride in having an efficient bus and train service.
But this is now not the case. We have not kept pace with the changing needs,
trends and technologies and now risk being irrelevant. The city, I see is
dying. It is imploding under its own weight and gravity – like a fading star. It
will suck inside all – into its black nothingness. This is the death, unless we
see some serious innovations.
Here – complete unrelated music… but I love the song… Jispa loves the movies
and the books.
