On Wednesday, November 9, the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) has relaunched the Mumbai Central to Panaji bus route.
This announcement comes just weeks ahead of the festive week of Christmas and New Year. MSRTC officials said that they are hopeful that this new route will attract tourists and will play an important role in revenue generation. The transport body had suffered revenue losses of around ₹3,000 crore during the COVID-19 lockdown period, which in turn resulted into pending salaries.
This route was introduced in December last year, but was discontinued later amid the pandemic outbreak.
ST Corporation had started sleeping bus service from Mumbai Central, which goes to Panaji via Chiplun, Kankavali, Sawantwadi, Mhapsa. The bus will leave the Mumbai Central depot at 4:30 pm and the Panaji depot at 4:00 pm daily. For the Mumbai-Panaji route, the MSRTC will be plying its conventional seater cum sleeper coach buses. The buses will have 30 seats and 15 sleeper beds.
The official stated that advance reservation of this bus would be available on ST Corporation's website as well as on the mobile reservation app. A single journey between Mumbai Central and Panaji will cost Rs 965 and there will be one bus service regularly.
It has been observed that every year lot of people from Mumbai visit Goa during December. However, this year it would be uncertain to say so, pertaining to travel rules being imposed in the wake of ongoing pandemic.
The MSRTC officials said that they will be monitoring the response of passengers on this route and then decide on whether to continue this route permanently or operate it occasionally during the festive season only.
However, officials also informed that the same would applicable for tourists travelling from Goa in buses as well, unless the state chooses to revise the rules.
Last month, the state had decided that passengers arriving from various states would be required to produce a COVID-19 negative certificate due to an increase in the cases.
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