Dinesh Kamath's news item 'More AC bus services for Navi Mumbai' that was published in Newsband

More AC bus services for Navi Mumbai

By Dinesh Kamath

NAVI MUMBAI: BEST plans to increase routes and frequency of its buses in Navi Mumbai too. More AC buses are being introduced to discourage people from using private vehicles to prevent traffic snarls in the city and its neighbourhood. This is the idea behind introducing new AC bus services.

BEST has around many buses running in Navi Mumbai out of which very few are AC. Around two lakhs people commute by these buses per day. But there are many more people who need to commute by these buses and hence there is an urgent need for the expansion of the AC fleet in Navi Mumbai.

Routes, city roads, express highway and freeways existing in the city need to be exploited by introducing enough BEST buses. If AC buses are faster, frequent and more reliable, citizens will not need to use their private cars.

AC buses cannot be used by all section of people owing to their high fares which is much more than general fares. At least the middle class people cannot afford to commute by such buses. A section of the commuters have made a demand to bring down the AC fares to make it affordable to even a common man.

The BEST authorities are indeed displaying keenness to introduce AC buses on new routes. The state government is also showing keen interest in this matter. BEST is trying to please the privileged class by deploying AC buses on dedicated lanes of the city. In fact, many of these people prefer AC buses to AC cabs or cars.

The advantage of bus service is that it can carry more passengers in a single vehicle, thus reducing congestion and pollution. A few hundred buses can carry more passengers than some lakhs of cars.

In Navi Mumbai, it was found that 28 AC Volvo buses, plying on just three routes, ferried several thousand people a day. NMMT (Navi Mumbai Municipal Transport) AC buses are also quite popular. Even those with cars many a time prefer to go by buses.