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Mumbai Faces Severe Bus Shortage: City Needs 8,000 Buses; Operates Only 3,000

The report emphasises how urgently at least 28,800 buses are needed to address the mobility needs of the state's 44 cities and 5.6 crore inhabitants.

Mumbai Faces Severe Bus Shortage: City Needs 8,000 Buses; Operates Only 3,000
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The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) estimates that Greater Mumbai needs about 8,000 buses to meet its transportation demands, indicating a severe bus deficit in the city. There is a sizable gap, though, as the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) only has roughly 3,000 buses in its fleet at the moment.

This amounts to just about 27 buses per lakh of Mumbai's population, which is far less than the 60 buses per lakh recommended by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA).

Additionally, the survey indicates that there is a bus deficit in Maharashtra's urban areas. The report emphasises how urgently at least 28,800 buses are needed to address the mobility needs of the state's 44 cities and 5.6 crore inhabitants. But according to the CIRT report from 2022, there are only 8,700 buses in the fleet, with about 3,500 of them nearing the end of their useful lives. This leaves 24,000 buses - including replacements for retiring vehicles - a significant gap.

In December 2024, the ITDP research evaluated the need for public transit in Maharashtra's cities. Cities with a population of more than two lakh people should have organised public transport systems, per the suggestions made by the Government of India's Working Group on Urban Transport under the 12th Five-Year Plan. However, only 14 of Maharashtra's 44 cities currently have official public bus services, meaning that 30 of them lack a bus network.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) recommends 40–60 buses per lakh, yet even in the 14 cities that have bus services, the average number of buses per lakh is a startlingly low 15 buses. According to the report, bus services should be established in underserved cities and the fleet should be expanded immediately.

Significant differences in bus availability across city levels were also brought to light by the analysis:

Cities in Tier 1 and 2:

The bus fleets in Maharashtra's nine biggest cities - including Pimpri-Chinchwad, Pune, and Greater Mumbai - need to be doubled. For example, Mumbai currently runs about 3000 buses, but 8,000 are required to keep up with demand. Likewise, the number of buses in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad needs to be doubled, from 2,200 to 4,500.

Cities in Tier 3 and 4:

The disparity is considerably more pronounced in the 35 smaller cities in the state, which have populations ranging from 2 to 20 lakh. The number of buses in these cities needs to be increased by a factor of 23. For instance, there are now just 90 buses in Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, significantly fewer than the 1,000 required to meet demand.

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