Ever since trains were opened for fully-vaccinated people, the daily count has increased. However, this has led to a drop in BEST passengers. In order to revive its customer base, the BEST has decided to operate 27 feeder routes that will connect all the stations across the city and suburbs. This will begin from September 1.
The BEST has reduced the total bus routes from 484 to 419. Before Covid-19, the undertaking used to operate 502 routes across the city. During lockdown, these buses had become the lifeline of the city as trains were discontinued. Currently, the daily average is 23.75 lakh passengers, which had crossed over 25 lakh to 26 lakh in the past few weeks.
“Since the trains have begun for fully vaccinated people, we rationalised our bus routes and reintroduced feeder routes that connects stations,” said a BEST official.
Besides, the authorities have introduced 15 new routes as well. These will begin from various depots like Colaba, Worli, Ghatkopar, Navy Nagar, Kurla station, Mulund and Maheshwari Udyan. The new routes will connect the Western and Eastern suburbs.
The officials said these buses will run every 10 to 15 minutes. They are also cancelling, extending, amalgamating, curtailing and even changing bus operations on 78 routes.
However, some residents took to social media and pointed out that actual rationalisation can take place only when the Metro is complete.
