Mahad Tragedy: Collapsed bridge has cut bus business by half

Following the bridge collapse, buses take two hours longer to reach Konkan

The cascading effect of the Mahad tragedy, where a bridge collapse led to two MSRTC buses and private vehicles falling into the river below, can still be felt - especially now during the festive season. There has been a dual impact that commuters and bus operators have had to deal with. One, the time for the journey from Mumbai to Konkan, which earlier took 10 hours has now gone up by over two hours, as the buses use the longer route, and second, just half the usual amount of private buses are still plying on the route.

In the last few days, private bus operators claim that unlike previous years where they were plying 1,000 buses a day, this time the number of passengers travelling to Konkan by bus has reduced and so they are only servicing 500 buses per day. "Ever since the bridge at Mahad collapsed, the buses have to take a longer route and they are skipping vital villages after Chiplun. So people then prefer taking trains," said Harsh Kotak, president of the Mumbai Bus Malak Sanghatna.

Railways steps up
Meanwhile, to meet the added pressure, the Railways has added to its roster 38 more Ganpati specials to and from Mumbai. The officials said that initially, they had announced 142 special trains, but then as they realised that the demand was high, they were forced to take it up to 180 Ganpati special trains, the bookings for which opened on August 22. Comparatively, last year, the Railways had scheduled 120-odd special trains during this period.

"We get lot of requests asking the Railways to run additional trains so this is a good thing. The wait list runs into thousands, so there is a need for extra special trains," said Subhash Gupta, member, Zonal Railway Users Consultative Committee and President of Rail Yatri Singh.