Okay, this might sound odd but one please do read on. It’s been over seven years since I wrote on anything related to Fire and Emergency Services. Interestingly, the only time I wrote on the subject was a poem about a firetruck (linked at the bottom).
Anyhow, getting back on topic, one thing off late I’ve noticed is an increasing number of fires in Mumbai, especially in and around Andheri. I was having a conversation on this matter with the friendly folks at the Andheri Lokhandwala Oshiwara Association (ALOCA) because a fire broke out earlier in the day (18 December) at a building near Lokhandwala Circle.
I just did a Twitter search for the world “fire” from ALOCA’s Twitter account and I counted no fewer than five fires in 2022 that they had reported. Now, the nearest fire station is the Andheri Fire Station that is located on Swami Vivekananda Road (SV Road) near Irla, approximately 1km south of Andheri station. The next fire station is the Goregaon Fire Station that lies behind the Goregaon/Oshiwara bus depots. Andheri East is served by the Marol Fire Station that is located at Marol Naka.
A cursory search revealed that the K-East and K-West wards were the most populated wards as per the 2001 census. Assuming a uniform growth rate, that would mean that the K wards remain among the most populated regions in the city.
Now I was reading up a report on Hindustan Times about a fire that took place in early 2022 at the Chitrakoot grounds on Link Road between DN Nagar and Lokhandwala. A film set caught fire resulting in the death of a 32-year old labourer. Now what is interesting is that a portion of the grounds was reserved to build the Mumbai Fire Brigade’s Ambivali Fire Station as part of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai’s (MCGM) Development Plan for 2034.
The plot in question belongs to the state government and in 2009 the MCGM had issued a commencement certificate to a private developer for construction of the fire station but it had since been cancelled due to a delay (or as we know it better, no action) on the part of the developer. The developer meanwhile has taken the entire plot on lease from the state government.
Due to heavy traffic in the region, which has now gone up since the closure of the Gokhale Bridge (one road closure has ripple effects, remember), it can take anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour for a fire tender to reach the Lokhandwala region which has numerous high-rises, malls, and shopping centres in the locality. The plot was reserved for a fire station over 20 years ago.
The plot meanwhile is used for a variety of commercial purposes from weddings to film shoots to cricket turfs and what not. Rents are lucrative too, and I have been told that cricket alone fetches anywhere upwards of ₹10,000 an hour.
With the polls to the MCGM looming, right now is the time to make noise about this. When political parties announce their respective candidates, please approach them and make sure that they promise it in their manifesto. That is the first step. If the candidate isn’t approachable, then it’s best you vote for someone else. Given that the Mayor of Mumbai has been from the Shiv Sena from 1996, I’d say there is limited scope of getting them to build one. Approach your MLA, especially if they’re part of the government. Andheri West residents, please approach Ameet Satam the local MLA while Versova residents please approach Dr Bharti Lavekar, both of whom are part of the ruling government. The advantage of having staggered elections is that if the person who you voted for in the MCGM isn’t doing good, you can avoid voting for them in the general election to the Parliament or the Legislative Assembly.
If you’re interested in reading the poem I wrote on a Firetruck, you can read it here: The Little Red Firetruck
Featured Image: MAN Firetruck of the Mumbai Fire Brigade at JVPD Circle (Photo: Srikanth Ramakrishnan/BESTpedia)
Adding another feather in its cap, the Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking will soon start premium air-conditioned buses in the city.
These new buses will be single-door electric buses manufactured by Ashok Leyland’s subsidiary Switch Mobility. Branded as Chalo Bus, they will be dark blue in colour with an orange livery. The bus will not feature any standees and commuters will have to book tickets upfront via the Chalo app. Buses will feature USB ports for charging devices, live tracking and will only stop if a reservation from the stop exists. Commuters will have subscription plans available as well as flexibility in scheduling and canceling.
As part of the first phase, four buses will hit the streets on 12 December 2022 with two routes that will run from Monday to Saturday.
Express Route: This route will run from Thane to Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) every 30 mins between 7am and 8.30am and in the reverse direction between 5.30pm and 7pm.
All-Day Route: This route will run from Bandra Station to BKC 8.50am and 5.50pm and in the reverse direction from 9.25pm to 6.25pm.
This makes BEST the first city in India to have a premium bus service that is entirely electric.
Fare for the new Chalo Bus
BEST has announced plans to launch 200 more such buses.
As of now, it is unknown which depot these buses will be housed at and whether they will be operated by Switch’s mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) subsidiary OHM Global Mobility.
I am personally disappointed by BEST’s decision to not stick to its ubiquitous red colour. The colour scheme is eerily reminiscent of BEST’s Purple Faeries. Another factor that makes me sceptical is the timings of the bus. By not operating on Sundays and restricting operations between 8am and 6pm, BEST is focusing only on one section of the userbase. If BEST is really looking at taking on cabs and auto-rickshaws, it needs to operate for longer periods and also operate on Sundays, predominantly to attract the touristy crowd.
Interestingly, a decade ago, the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) experimented with its now defunct Shivneri Corporate service. It used its existing Shivneri fleet of Volvo B7Rs as a point-to-point service from Kandivali to BKC.
This is a rather long article. I’d recommend you please read the entire thing before cursing me. Also, where I have begged you to click a link and read, please do?
Not too long ago, we were fed an idea of this futuristic transport system that was really high-speed in nature and had the potential to disrupt the very way we imagined commuting. The idea was so radical that we were even told that it could go up to 1220 km/hr (760 miles apparently). Imagine that. Imagine doing Mumbai to Chennai in a little over an hour. You could have Kande Pohe for breakfast, take a ride, go have some filter coffee and then get back to work.
This radical idea even had a radically different name – one which made no sense whatsoever – the Hyperloop. Of course, while billions of dollars were spent in various proposals, with the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) even going so far as setting up a Centre of Excellence for Hyperloop Technology (CoEHT) at IITM to develop the Avishkar Hyperloop, it eventually was reported that SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk allegedly came up with the Vactrain-based concept to scuttle the California High-Speed Rail project. While I may not be the best to judge on this matter, the Hyperloop sadly has not evolved into a real thing, at least not yet. Till then, here’s Elon Musk’s napkin sketch of what his interpretation of George Medhurst’s 1799 concept looks like.
Elon Musk’s napkin sketch of the Hyperloop
A few years later, came another idea, again from Musk. This time, he got stuck in traffic and decided that he would bore his way out. And so he set about creating a very Boring venture. No, really, he started the Boring Company.
It all sounded good, and then it became essentially a system of tunnels for cars. I had written about it too, back then. Read about it here. Two years later amidst criticism, he announced that the system would prioritise public transport and those without cars. I wrote about that too. You can read it here, on Swarajya.
I think the culmination of Elon Musk’s boring idea and my idle mind during the lockdown, combined with the utter antipathy from the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vinash Vikash Aghadi government resulted in me writing one of my most blockbuster satire stories ever: In the absence of a depot, Mumbai Metro 3 to run BEST buses in the tunnel. But clearly, it didn’t go anywhere. Here is a picture of the Las Vegas Convention Centre (LVVC) Loop built by TBC.
Las Vegas Convention Centre (LVVC) Loop
Musk (again, yes, I know) then came up with a concept from the spaceX Starship called the BFR, aka the Big Falcon Rocket, aka the Big Fucking Rocket (as he said it) which he claimed could be used to do a trip from Delhi to Tokyo in 30 minutes. Not a bad idea, but it will probably take you twice that to get to Delhi Airport or wherever a rocket from Delhi would take off. Of course, this means Chhole Bhature for breakfast and Sushi for lunch. Win-win no? Here is a picture of that too.
SpaceX illustration of the 2018 Big Falcon Rocket at stage separation
Now, after boring you for nearly 500 words about Elon Musk, let me bring you to what I really wanted to talk about.
For those of you who are fans of Rowan Atkinson, you might already have an idea of what I am going to talk about. No, I’m not talking about the alien spaceship from Mr Bean. I’m not talking about The Thin Blue Line, Blackadder or the Glass Elevator from Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. If you’ve seen Johnny English Reborn, you know what I’m talking about.
The future of transportation comes from Volkswagen. Yes, the same company that was founded by acolytes of a certain Adolf Hitler, disabled their vehicles’ emission control systems outside of test environments (fondly known as Dieselgate or Emissionsgate) and recently became the choice of Charmed actress Alyssa Milano who ditched her Tesla for a WV in support of free speech and to reject hatred and what not. I could go on but describing a libbu is tedious work.
Volkswagen Norway’s Commercial Vehicles team designed the as-yet unnamed device, the office chair. You know what they said about it?
The chair is designed to give those who work in an office a feeling of what it’s like to have a car from Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles as your workplace. You can drive, honk and listen to music – even signal as you take a turn into a meeting room.
Volkswagen
Oh yeah! The chair is here.
Volkswagen Office Chair
The chair can do around 20 km/hr and has a detachable battery and can do up to 12km on a full charge. Now that’s a bit of a let down, if you ask me. But this is indeed the future of transportation. And while people like me predicted six years ago that Handicar would be the future (at this point, I urge you to click this link, read and laugh, please), it turns out Eric Cartman sitting on a mobility scooter is closer to reality.
Eric Cartman on a Mobility Scooter
This is quite a breakthrough. Unfortunately, fans of super agent Johnny English may not be able to quite replicate what he did with the wheelchair with the WVchair. See what I did there? No? Me neither.
If you don’t remember what Agent English did, here is a visual reminder of what Agent English did.
However, this is a breakthrough. A major major breakthrough. Why, you ask? It’s simple. Whenever a company does something that is different from what it actually does, the results are interesting. Imagine if Apple manufactured a jetpack (or something similar, as Aapil Sathukudinathan discovered here, please read) or if Microsoft built software to count vehicles at Toll Plazas (oh wait, that was Traf-O-Data) or McDonald’s used the excess fat from their kitchen to power vehicles. This is as significant as Rolls Royce manufacturing honey! No kidding here though, Rolls Royce actually sold honey from bees at their apiary.
Rolls Royce Honey
So get ready. Get ready to ditch every mode of public and private transport that you have ever used in your life. It’s time for you to embrace the sedentary lifestyle of a software engineer and sit on your chair all day long as you go from one place to another.
If you’re on Twitter, do share this link and tag Elon Musk. Maybe he might invest in my potential transport-based startup. And also ask him to restore my old Twitter account, given his talks on free speech.
At a presentation made by the World Resources Institute (WRI India) at the Urban Mobility India conference, it was reported that the cost-per-kilometre had come down by 30 per cent for buses of the Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking.
As per a report in Economic Times, out of the 3,619 buses in BEST’s fleet, 48 per cent is wet-leased under the Gross Cost Contract (GCC) model. BEST officials say that the GCC model has helped them reduce losses by close to ₹400 crore a year.
The report added that cities that don’t have the resources or expertise required to operate an efficient public transport system can look at the GCC model, currently being trialed in tier-2 cities in Maharashtra and also with buses of the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC).
WRI’s report added that Indian cities would need to invest ₹7.5 lakh crore by 2030 on bus transport to meet the demand. It opined that the current outlay of 60,000 buses in urban areas was inadequate and at least 1.3 lakh buses would be needed to meet the demand. It also stated that integration of public transport networks, including buses, trains and metro rail could create new employment opportunities.
On the subject of electric mobility, Maharashtra is among the top three states, collectively accounting for 72 per cent of electric buses operational across the country. Mumbai alone has 403 electric buses, making it the highest among all metro cities.
Featured Image: Bus A252 at Andheri Station (Photo clicked in 2019 by Srikanth Ramakrishnan/BESTpedia)
Sometimes, public transport can turn up some really creative elements. They may be just plain decorations or they may be functional, but there is no denying that there is some creativity involved in it.
And that’s where BEST’s Bus Chowky at Maharana Pratap Chowk, Mazagaon gets full points. A bus chowky is a bus terminus where there is no full-fledged bus stand and starters assign duties. Since this one is in South Bombay, it also acts as a payment centre for customers to pay their BEST electricity bills.
Fellow bus fan and photographer Rupak Dhakate shared this picture on Instagram.
As you can see, the above Bus Chowky is painted to look exactly like BEST’s iconic red buses. Not just that, it also has the bus depot name and number along with the registration number painted on: 207/CN belonging to the Mumbai Central depot bearing the registration number MH-01-LA-6052.
Don’t forget to follow Rupak on Instagram: @rd.stic!
Next time you head to Maharana Pratap Chowk in Mazagaon to either catch a bus or pay your electricity bill, do check it out.
Featured Image: Maharana Pratap Chowk Bus Chowky and Bill Payment Centre by Rupak Dhakate (Used with permission)
With the impending opening up of the Vandalur Kilambakkam Bus Terminus in southern Chennai, one fear among many of the city’s residents is not going away. The Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) has proposed to shut down the Chennai Mofussil Bus Terminus (CMBT) (also known as Puratchi Thalaivar Dr MGR Bus Terminus or MGR Koyambedu) permanently.
A little background
Broadway Bus Terminus. Photo Credit: Commercial Vehicles Magazine
Opened in 2002, CMBT is a 37-acre bus station that serves as Chennai’s primary terminus for mofussil and long distance buses operated by various government agencies. It is owned by the CMDA and operated jointly by the six divisions of the Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (TNSTC), namely TNSTC Villupuram, TNSTC Coimbatore, TNSTC Salem, TNSTC Kumbakonam, TNSTC Tirunelveli and TNSTC Madurai. The remaining two arms of the TNSTC, the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) and the State Express Transport Corporation (SETC) also play a role in the daily operations.
Prior to 2002, Chennai had no dedicated bus station for long-distance buses. Few SETC buses usually operated out of one half of the Broadway bus terminus. Other SETC and nearby states’ buses would operate out of a vacant plot of land opposite Chennai Fort railway station, which today houses the Government Dental College and Hospital while private buses would operate from the Gandhi-Irvin Bridge Road near Chennai Egmore railway station on the banks of the Cooum river.
In the late 1990s, the wholesale market located at Kothawal Chavadi was moved to a 295 acre plot in Koyambedu. After this, the entire operations of all government buses was shifted to the new bus terminus at CMBT. A separate 6.7 acre bus station was built across the road, adjacent to the whole market. Named the Chennai Contract Carriage Bus Terminus (CCCBT), it handles between 350 to 450 private buses and 5,000 passengers a day.
Till 2018, CMBT was the hub for all TNSTC and SETC buses, as well as buses operated by the RTCs of Puducherry (PRTC), Karnataka (KSRTC), Kerala (also KSRTC), Andhra Pradesh (APSRTC), and Telangana (TSRTC). In 2018, TNSTC buses bound for Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, as well as APSRTC and TSRTC buses were shifted out to Madhavaram Mofussil Bus Terminus (MMBT).
Madhavaram has its problems
Madhavaram Mofussil Bus Terminus (MMBT). Photo Credits: BNR Infrastructure
MMBT is an 8 acre, two-level bus terminus located at Madhavaram, adjacent to CMDA’s truck terminal, at the intersection of Grand Northern Trunk Road (GNT Road) that forms National Highway 16 (formerly NH5) and Inner Ring Road (IRR/State Highway 2). While it does feature two platforms for MTC buses, it otherwise lacks good connectivity. There are a few buses that connect it to CMBT and a lot of buses that connect it to Broadway or Vallalar Nagar (V Nagar/Mint Street). Passengers arriving from CMBT have to cross the road at the roundabout which witnesses heavy truck traffic. While MMBT and CMBT are located barely 10km apart, it can take up to 30-40 minutes to reach there.
Around 315 buses use the terminus daily, catering to an average of 12,000 passengers, with a higher number over the weekends. While TNSTC and APSRTC operate numerous services to Andhra Pradesh, TSRTC operates one Volvo service to Hyderabad. APSRTC operates several buses to Vijayawada. There are no buses to Visakhapatnam or Yanam and SETC doesn’t operate a single bus into either Telugu-speaking state. In fact the destination with the highest number of SETC routes apart from Chennai is Bangalore.
MMBT can handle 42 buses on the ground level and another 50 from the upper level. However, only government buses currently operate from MMBT while private buses continue to operate from CCCBT. This puts the former, especially APSRTC buses at a major disadvantage. Interestingly, some of TNSTC’s buses bound to Tirupati start from CMBT, which also gives it an unfair advantage over its Andhra Pradesh counterpart.
Connectivity to Madhavaram will eventually improve drastically. The under-construction lines 3 and 5 of the Chennai Metro both start at Madhavaram Milk Colony, located to the northeast of MMBT with Line 5 have a station outside MMBT. It will further continue on IRR and meet the Green Line at Koyambedu (not CMBT) and then at Alandur before meeting the MRTS at St Thomas Mount/Parangimalai. While the Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) expects all three lines of Phase 2 to be completed by 2025, our friend TheMetroRailGuyestimates it to be completed no sooner than 2028.
Now coming to Vandalur Kilambakkam
While CMBT is currently Asia’s largest bus terminus at 37 acres, it will be soon dwarfed by the Vandalur Kilambakkam bus terminus that is spread across a whopping 88.5 acres. A timely reminder here that Delhi’s Millenium Park is not a bus station but a depot and therefore not Asia’s largest bus station.
With a total built-up area of 6.4 lakh square feet, it will feature 215 bus bays of which 130 will be for government buses and 85 will serve private buses. It will also have parking space for 300 buses, 275 cars and over 3,500 two-wheelers. An MTC terminal is being built adjacent to it, spread over 7.4 acres, nearly the area of MMBT. Interestingly the entire bus terminus lies within a protected and prohibited zone of the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) as it contains Megalith Burial Sites. The National Monument Authority (NMA) gave a green signal so long as no commercial development took place for 100m in the region except for greenery and the CMDA installed the required signage.
By road, the distance between CMBT and Kilambakkam is exactly 30km if one were to take IRR till Kathipara and then continue onto Grand Southern Trunk Road (GST Road). The distance is the same if one were to go to Maduravoyal and take the Chennai Bypass till Irumbuliyur and then proceed along GST Road. Outer Ring Road (ORR) terminates on GST Road just north of the bus station. The nearest railway stations are Vandalur and Urapakkam on the Southern Line of the suburban railway, both of which are at least 10 minutes away. As for Metro, the nearest station is Chennai International Airport, located 16km away. After a long tussle between the Highways Department and CMRL, an extension of the Blue Line from Airport to Kilambakkam is on the map. The former wanted to build an elevated corridor on the route and the metro’s height will be decided accordingly. However, this will take several years to reach fruition and till then there will be heavy traffic. CMRL has also initiated feasibility studies to extend Line 3 (Madhavaram Milk Colony to Siruseri) to Kilambakkam via Kelambakkam (Get ready for more confusion). However this is light years away since the depot is at Madhavaram and most of the line runs underground and without a depot connection, nothing can happen.
One theory that I have heard is that private players would lobby the government to let them continue operating at CCCBT. This would put all TNSTC services at an unfair disadvantage and would hurt the poorer sections of society the most. Further, GST Road is the most congested highway in Chennai since it acts as a gateway to the entire south from Coimbatore to Madurai to Trichy to Tirunelveli and Nagarcoil. The time saved by buses in exiting the city will be lost in reaching the terminus. Auto and cab fares will end up costing the same as an intercity luxury bus ticket while bus journeys with luggage in MTC buses would be unbearable.
The worst hit would be commuters towards the West: Those heading to Vellore, Bangalore, Hosur, Krishnagiri, Dharmapuri and even Salem, Erode and Coimbatore. Passengers living in North Chennai will also be affected badly. The bus journey from Bangalore which takes approximately six hours from Shantinagar to CMBT will go up by at least an hour and then there is the extra hour lost in getting to Chennai city itself.
Note: Bangalore-bound passengers won’t have to travel to Kilambakam at all. But it’s worse. Read the update section at the bottom of the post please.
The way ahead
The way ahead for CMBT isn’t all that difficult. It currently has connectivity to most parts of Chennai thru MTC buses, has a metro connection to both the major railheads (MGR Chennai Central and Chennai Egmore) and the airport.
Among the various proposals for the land, the most ridiculous one is to build a park. While I won’t deny that parks are important, the city is home to 632 parks as of 2019. The city’s per capita green cover stands at 8.5 square metres, just short of WHO recommendation of 9 square metres. In 2019, the began an ambitious plan to set up 67 new parks, mainly due to the destruction of close to one lakh trees in 2016 due to Cyclone Vardah.
CMBT can remain a bus terminus, albeit with some redevelopment. CMRL is in the process of redeveloping Broadway as a multi-storey bus terminal. MTC has been toying with this idea for the Thyagaraya Nagar (T Nagar) bus terminus for years now. CMBT could easily be redeveloped with a bus station at the ground level, parking and commercial operations above that. Bangalore has successfully done this. The Shantinagar bus depot was converted into a bus terminus with a Big Bazar and a parking lot atop the bus station back in the early 2000s. In fact, even the Kalasipalayam bus terminus, used mostly by private buses has been redeveloped in such a fashion. With bus and metro connectivity, the land will be premium, and give the CMDA a significant return on investment that can be used elsewhere.
There is no requirement for CMBT to shut down. Broadway didn’t shut down when CMBT opened up and in fact some SETC buses for Madurai still depart from Broadway. Many cities operate with multiple bus terminals. Mumbai has five outstation bus terminals while Pune has three. Bangalore has three and its central bus station, the Kempegowda Bus Station at Majestic was briefly downsized for metro construction. In the interim, certain buses were moved to Shantinagar and Mysore Road Satellite Bus Station at Bapujinagar. Today all three operate successfully.
But perhaps the most radical of all ideas came from a friend on Twitter, Krishnan. He tweeted that the site could be used for a future High Speed Rail terminal, and I could not agree any more. Given that the first HSR line to Chennai will connect it to Bangalore, it makes sense to keep the terminal somewhere near Poonamalle High Road/Grand Western Trunk Road (GWT Road). Given CMBT’s nature as the city’s pre-eminent transport hub, it makes perfect sense to make CMBT the HSR terminal as well. It will aid in quick commutes, fast transfers between different modes of transport, and will not hurt passengers’ wallets or watches.
Update
It’s 2024 and Kilambakkam (now nammed Kalaignar Centenary Bus Terminal or KCBT) is operational. While I haven’t been there, things aren’t smooth. MTC buses bound for KCBT are taking a minimum of an hour to reach there from Velachery. One good thing is 21G (Broadway to Vandalur Zoo) has been extended to KCBT, especially the AC bus but there are no AC buses from CMBT.
Private buses have refused to ply from KCBT and CMDA and the transport department has threatened to file criminal cases against them. Some buses were even forced to run empty from CMBT to KCBT. You can read more here. Southern Railways meanwhile has begun work on a new station which will take time to complete. On this note, do read: Urban Connectivity Chaos: People Managing Metro, Railway, Bus Stations Are Working In Silos by Srikanth Ramakrishnan on Swarajya.
For Bangalore and other West-bound passengers. It seems the powers that are have decided to make things worse for us. We will have to depart from another bus terminus, this time at Kuthambakkam near Thirumazhisai. This 25-acre bus terminus is touted to be completely air-conditioned and will feature a food court. The downside? It’s worse located than KCBT. It is approximately 9km from the Poonamalle junction and 2.5km from the highway. Getting there will obviously be a mess. It will feature 136 bus bays and CMDA is in the process of identifying access roads to be built. The Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (CUMTA) has asked for an extension of the metro to start work. This line, connecting Poonamalle too Light House is under construction and connects with the existing network at Vadapalani.
Let us pray that the administration does not miss this opportunity.
Featured Image: Chennai Mofussil Bus Station (Seshadri Sukumar/PIB Chennai)
A while back the internet was flooded with a video of a bus with a scrolling display that read Madarchod Sukheja. However, it seems that the incident has quite a backstory to it.
According to reports, the bus is owned by Sukheja Travels, owned by one Satish Sukheja and plies on the Satna-Indore route in Madhya Pradesh. Apparently, neither the driver nor Sukheja were aware of the expletive on the bus’ display till people noticed it and alerted them to it. Accordingly, Anil Kumar Pathak, the company’s manager filed a case with the Kolgawan Police Station in Satna.
So what happened?
A while back, one employee named Salman Khan was hired by Sukheja as a bus driver. However, it soon came to light that Khan had trouble driving post evenings and wore high-powered glasses. Sukheja questioned the transport department for issuing him a licence in such a condition, his licence did not show his glasses in the photograph. Subsequently Khan was offered to drive a four-wheeler instead but that didn’t pan out and after a month of employment, he was let go off. In his complaint, Pathak stated that only Khan had the password for the LED display unit for the bus in question (MP 19 P 7782) and thus it was evident that he was the one who tampered with it.
Since then, the story has gone viral over the internet with most people (including me) laughing it off as a practical joke but once knowing what the real story was, it is a little sad. It also speaks volumes about our driving licence regimes and that something must be done to rectify it. It also talks about the dangers of leaving the bus display controls open to potential misuse as they could be used for a wide variety of purposes.
Sukheja is looking at recovering ₹55,000 from Khan for a possible malfunctioning display.
Your commute could soon become better (or even BEST, pun intended) as the Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking has begun the process of calling for tenders for agencies to supply electric cabs with drivers (also known as a wet lease) for last-mile connectivity in Mumbai. According to an article written for the Times of India by Somit Sen, the agency will provide cabs on an ‘aggregator basis’ on a revenue-sharing model with the agency providing the vehicles and staff and thus keep BEST’s capital expenditure at zero. The article also mentions that the agency will provide fuel, which is kind of odd given that these are electric vehicles. The cabs will be electrified.
Users who want to book then can book them using BEST’s Chalo App, and fares will be on par with other aggregators including Ola and Uber. A user can plan a -multi-modal journey using both cabs and buses.
Although unrelated, BEST also recently procured 16 electric Tata cars for its staff to use.
An important question arises: If the private partner is providing the fuel, to be read as paying for electricity, then what about the charging? Will the undertaking open up its charging infrastructure at various depots and bus stations for these vehicles?
An interesting point to note: Fellow transit-enthusiast Kundan Srivastav had explained (in detail) a similar concept where public transport agencies such as BEST could tie-up with private partners to operate taxis under a common brand name way back in 2020 during the early stages of the lockdown. I hope he may write an article on it some day. Please do follow Kundan on Twitter, @kun_srivastav.
An even more interesting thing to note. A year ago, in August 2021, a badly photoshopped picture of a red Volkswagen Polo with BEST’s logo on it made the rounds on social media, purporting to be BEST’s new electric taxi service. BEST clarified it to be fake news. You can read more about it here: Fake News Alert: BEST Is Not Launching Electric Taxis.
In what can only be deemed a major embarrassment for the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) of Chennai, crewmembers belonging to the Chromepet Depot (CR/CW) were found to have disconnected the vehicle tracking devices and skipping interior regions in mini-bus routes. These buses, operating as “Small Bus” are generally operated as feeder services from metro, railway and bus stations to interior regions where the patronage is low.
According to a report in the Times of India, the issue came to light when residents of Chitlapakkam were unable to track the bus S100 that runs from Tambaaram to Chennai International Airport Metro Station. In May 2022, transport minister SS Sivashankar had launched the Chennai Busapp, developed in partnership with Chalo. MTC staff were reported to have disconnected the tracking devices in their bus and then skipped some regions altogether, thus leading to long waiting times. Officials of both the MTC and the Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) warned the staff and even deputed officials on the buses to ensure that they did not skip any stops or routes.
This brings about an important question. What are we to do when services are being sabotaged by the staff themselves? A general warning is not good enough. There has to be serious consequences. A lack of pay or suspension without pay or even termination of employment would ideally make the best sense. At the end of the day, public transport is largely non-profitable and is funded by taxpayer money.
On another note, since MTC has brought back AC buses after a long time, maybe MTC could consider running AC mini-buses on certain routes, especially feeders for the metro.
Featured Image: MTC Small bus on Route S35 from Ashok Pillar/Ashok Nagar Metro Station to Defence Colony (Ekkattuthangal). Photo clicked in 2014 by Srikanth Ramakrishnan, available on the Wikimedia Commons.
In 2019, when BEST decided to introduce Minibuses in Mumbai, there was a lot of uproar on social media about using these small buses for public transport. The outcry got louder and louder when these tiny-tots were pressed into service on major long-distance routes in 2020 in lieu of double-decker buses that were getting scrapped.
However, some 1,351km south of Mumbai, another city has experimented with minibuses and has been more successful.
Over the weekend, I made a trip to India’s favourite tourist city in the South – Pondicherry. While the journey to Pondy is a different story, it will get an article soon. While walking along the streets, I saw what looks like a minibus that was squashed. At first, I wondered, was it a minibus? Or was it so small that one could call it a micro-bus?
PRTC Minibus near Indira Gandhi Statue (Srikanth Ramakrishnan/BESTpedia)
However, I did manage to count the seats while the bus was waiting at a signal and it could seat 20 people. It isn’t all that small.
What surprised me was that the bus carried the JnNURM logo (the logo itself is a jurm) but was in a relatively good condition. Odd, given that most of the Puducherry Road Transport Corporation’s (PRTC’s) JnNURM buses were dilapidated and like their counterpart up north (I’m talking about you, MTC), JnNURM-funded Volvos have left their fleet entirely. The PRTC used to operate Volvo B7RLE buses from Chennai to Pondy and prior to that, they even operated Volvo B7R buses.
I did some digging online and came across a 2016 article from The Hindu. These buses were procured somewhere in early 2015 when the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM) was folded up and superseded by the Atal Mission for Urban Rejuvenation and Transformation (AMRUT). Fifteen buses were inducted into the PRTC fleet with 10 of them serving the city (and enclave) of Puducherry and the remaining five in Karaikal, around 130km further south. Services operated from 5am to 13.30pm and fares were fixed at ₹5.
For many a resident of the union territory, these buses have been a blessing. Auto-rickshaws in Pondy, just like Chennai are notorious for overcharging. In many cases, they can charge as much as ₹150 for distances no longer than a kilometre. Thus, a bus ticket a fraction of that cost will succeed. Many areas of the city feature narrow roads that can’t handle a regular bus. This deprived these areas of proper public transport, forcing people to walk or shell out outrageous amounts for other services. An added bonus, was that it helped a lot of women reach the city-centre for their work.
While the PRTC had a lot of plans to upgrade their network in 2014 including implementing an Intelligent Transit System (ITS), GPS tracking, electronic ticketing, upgrading their Volvo fleet and more, not much happened, probably due to the lacklusture government led by V. Narayanasamy of the Indian National Congress. We hope that N. Rangaswamy’s government works on improving public transport in the union territory soon.
The PRTC has its origins in the Puducherry Tourism and Transport Development Corportation (PTTDC) that was formed in 1992. In 2005, it was bifurcated, giving birth to the current entity. Once with a fleet strength of 141 buses, it currently operates only 65 buses across the four enclaves. It operates local services in all of them, while providing a few long distance routes connecting Puducherry with Karaikal and Mahe, along with other cities such as Chennai, Bangalore, Coimbatore and Tirupati. The sole bus connecting Puducherry to Yanam was discontinued due to low earnings. The corporation faces stiff challenges from private players as well as the Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (TNSTC).
Featured Image: PRTC Minibus at Rajiv Gandhi Bus Station (Srikanth Ramakrishnan/BESTpedia)
Higher resolution versions of both images used in this article are available on the Wikimedia Commons and can be attributed to Srikanth Ramakrishnan/BESTpedia.
