‘25% city buses off road as they fail to restore footfall post COVID’

 

 

About 25 per cent of the city buses’ fleet are off the road, and the operational figures indicate a drastic drop in the number of commuters as compared to pre-Covid-19 times. The outbreak of the pandemic could have dealt a telling blow to city bus operations of Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) as the response of commuters is lukewarm, even as other operations of the city have restored normalcy. But another way of reading the data could be that lesser number of buses on the roads and reworking of routes on part of the Transport Department of the civic body could be one possible reason for the drop in the footfall. Post Covid-19, the planners scrapped some of the well patronaged city bus routes that may have forced citizens to switch back to alternative mode of transport. A comparative analysis of pre-Covid-19 and current figures of footfalls shows a drastic reduction in ridership. One could have understood the drop if it was attributed to increased ridership in Metro, but even there the dip in ridership is telling. Then perhaps people might have switched back to individual mode of transport during the lockdown and, later during gradual relaxation period, there was increased use of personalised vehicles for various works.

 

Compared to earlier times, the city bus service today boasts of quite well maintained fleet and now even NMC has introduced air conditioned buses for additional comfort. Yet the ridership figure is nowhere near the pre- Covid-19 level, it was highest 52,68,490 during the month of February 2020, just before the lockdown was announced, and during year 2022 the single highestmovement of commuters was in month of December 2022 at 38,66,579. During February ’20, the per day ridership was 18,81,160 while in December '22 it was 12,47,728. Information collated by city-based RTI activist Abhay Kolarkar, who sought the data under RTI, reveals that even in year 2023, the city bus operations continues to face daunting task of scaling-up its performance as patronage form citizens remains quite poor. In January 2023, the total commuters per day was just 1,17,707 which compared to Jan ’20 is quite low and monthly total was 36,48,919 which dipped to 34,36,431 in February and increased in March but reduced in April and slightly increased again in May 2023.

 

As of now, NMC has appointed DiMTS as nodal agency for overseeing the city bus operations. The company in turn has hitched on Travel Time City Bus Service Pvt Ltd to who maximum payment of Rs 50.59 crore was made in year 2022 followed by R K City Travels Pvt Ltd that drew Rs 46.88 cr in same year and Hansa City Bus Service Nagpur Pvt Ltd got Rs 49 cr. The electric buses were introduced in city bus fleet from 2023 and Rs 2.41 crore was paid so far to Hansa Motors Nagpur Pvt Ltd. Rs 7 crores to EVEYTRANS (NGP) Pvt Ltd and Rs 0.73 crore to Olectra Greentech Pvt Ltd. About the number of buses and its configuration, DiMTS stated that standard diesel buses number 165, Standard CNG 72, MIDI Diesel 150, MINI Diesel 45, Electric (Non-AC) 46 and Electric (AC) 45. So total fleet is 518 and of them only 57 standard diesel buses are in operation, 70 in standard CNG category, 136 in MIDI Diesel, 40 in MINI Diesel, 44 in Non AC electrical and 37 in AC electrical. So about 385 buses are only daily plying on the roads. So one of the reason for a dip in number of travellers could be due to lesser number of buses on city streets and nearly 24 vehicles are listed for scrapping. Similarly, 80 buses are not in operations and listed as spare and maximum include 60 of std diesel, 5 of MINI diesel, 2 non AC and 3 AC ones.