Time to take a teeny weeny break from BEST and look at another transco from the region. This time it’s MSRTC, aka ST. The MSRTC has five depots in the Mumbai Division of which three – Parel, Mumbai Central and Kurla Nehru Nagar – are located in Mumbai City limits while the remaining two – Uran and Panvel – are located in Navi Mumbai. Among the first three, the Parel Depot is home to the Shivneri and Ashwamedh fleet. I have posted about them back in 2016; you can check it out here: [Photos] Depots of Luxury.
Essentially the Parel Depot is home to the Volvo and Scania fleet along with the Swargate Depot in Pune.
Here is a video (and a photograph) of the depot from August last year, during the rains.
After flights resumed in select sectors to allow people to return home, airports have been busy zones with people being transported to quarantine zones for the ongoing Wuhan Virus pandemic.
At Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, buses are lined up to ferry passengers to the hotels that are used for quarantine purposes. Here are some pictures:
BEST’s mini-bus fleet waiting at T2, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport. Photo by Mahesh Sakhalkar.
As you can see, BEST has deployed its mini-bus fleet for this purpose. These post vans have been used for myriad purposes over the last three months. They’ve been used to carry essential supplies, they’ve been used as ambulances, they have been used as shuttle services for essential workers and more.
BEST’s mini-bus fleet waiting at T2, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport. Photo by Mahesh Sakhalkar.
Here is another snap of these buses queued up at the terminal.
Now, BEST isn’t the only transco with its buses being used to ferry passengers from the airport. The Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC/ST) is also using its Shivshahi fleet of AC buses to ferry passengers.
MSRTC’s Shivshahi fleet waiting at T2, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport. Photo by Mahesh Sakhalkar.
The Shivneri fleet meanwhile has been used to carry goods.
Here is a picture of the Shivneri Scania fleet parked at Nancy Colony, Borivali. The regular buses are used as cargo buses, mostly to transport mangoes.
MSRTC’s Scania Shivneri fleet parked at Nancy Colony. Photo by Yash Mhadgut.
An update: Regular buses are being used as Cargo buses with seats removed. The bus in the picture is a Malvan- Borivali cargo bus which mostly carried Mangoes.
Here is another picture of the Shivneri fleet:
MSRTC’s Scania Shivneri fleet parked at Nancy Colony. Photo by Yash Mhadgut.
Both BEST and MSRTC are using their AC bus fleet.
That’s all from me this time. Stay tuned for some more amazing drone shots to be seen though.
In the meantime though, traffic to this blog went up by leaps and bounds over the last month. I’ve made more than 10 posts in June 2020 (higher than the 10 I made in December 2015) and one post in particular – Mission Begin Again: Here Are BEST’s Bus Operations From 8 June 2020 – saw a huge spike in visits, notably from Google Search (for obvious reasons). Of course, this resulted in increased ad revenue as well, but Google AdSense has deemed this traffic as ‘invalid’ because well, it’s their hegemony, remember? Hence, you won’t be seeing Google Ads on this site for the time being.
