Mumbai: With increasing population of Mumbai and decreasing fleet of the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) buses, Mumbaikars march towards a public movement demanding revival of public transport in the city. The ‘Aamchi Mumbai Aamchi BEST’ movement has put out a list of demands in front of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation and the BEST to make the intra-city bus service as efficient as it was earlier.
On Wednesday, public movement Aamchi Mumbai Aamchi BEST held a press conference at the Mumbai Press Club raising concerns over the deteriorating quality of bus transport service in the city and also put forward a list of demands to revive the quality transport.
In a jampacked conference, the members of the agitation highlighted that BEST had a 4,385 strong public bus fleet in 2010 and by July this year, the total number of buses had dropped to 3158 out of which only 1072 are owned by BEST.
The members of the movement expressed concerns that the BEST owned fleet will disappear altogether in the next few years, as the BMC and BEST are making plans to redevelop precious public land holdings to ‘generate revenue for the utility, which is facing financial problems of its own making.
Raju Parulekar, a writer who is a part of the movement, said, “I remember my youth days when I used to travel the entire city in a BEST bus without any hassle but not a declining fleet, discontinuation of long routes, badly maintained buses. Diverted buses, and failing operations have made travel an unbearable torture for common Mumbaikars. It is a big question why BMC, the richest municipal corporations in India, is refusing to merge their budget with the BEST budget in order to subsidize this city bus service.”
The citizens’ movement committed to public transport made six demands on Wednesday which included subsisation of BEST as part of the BMC budget. Claiming that affordable public transport is a right, the movement demanded that BEST should now be directly subsidised by BMC, unlike receiving it from BEST’s electricity division. It also demadned discontinuation of contractor operated buses and complete restoration of public fleet, citing safety and reliability issues.
Along with resuming all discontinued bus routes, the movement also demanded to increase the number of buses to at least 1 bus per 2,000 population. It also called for encouraging behavioural shift from private to public transport but introducing bus priority lanes on all arterial routes in the city. Lastly, it also demanded that monetisation and redevelopment of BEST depots should be stopped citing that the land belongs to the public and not builders.
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Tapati Mukhopadhyay, a professor and a part of the movement, said, “Coming from a very poorly managed public transport in Calcutta, Mumbai’s BEST showed me how a public transport service should be. But in all these years, I have seen it falling. They are spending thousands of crores of rupees on metro trains which are just a showpiece for the government. The once acclaimed public transport have now been reduced to shambles.”
