While not everyone may be happy with the arrival of BEST mini-buses last month, it seems like the citizens certainly are. There are a total of seven mini-buses currently running between Andheri stations and Versova, carrying over 475 passengers every day. The authorities claim that the overall revenue generated by all seven buses comes down to around Rs 20,000 per day.
BEST’s mini-buses are quite affordable compared to metros or autorickshaws. Ticket prices have been kept at a reasonable Rs 6. In comparison, tickets for the metro can cost you up to Rs 20 for the same route, while autorickshaws can charge up to Rs 30 or 40 for the same. Given the demand these mini-buses are seeing, BEST added three more buses to the fleet earlier this week.
The MMOPL (Mumbai Metro One Private Ltd), however, claims that its business has not been affected since the arrival of these mini-buses. “We run Metro trains every 3-3.5 minutes during peak hours and 8 minutes otherwise. We carry 50,000 passengers between Andheri and Versova stations each day”, an official from the MMOPL said. It is worth noting that an average of 4 lakh passengers travel on the Andheri-Ghatkopar route.
BEST unions, however, remain opposed to the introduction of these buses citing traffic trouble as well as the fact that the standard BEST buses have to wait until the mini-buses are occupied by passengers.
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