Mumbai: BEST studying commuters' travel patterns to design new routes

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With an aim to provide last-mile connectivity to its commuters, Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) has designed over 100 routes in parallel lines of Mumbai Metro services which are operational as well as under construction. The BEST officials conducted a travel study on various Metro corridors before designing these new routes in the city.

Six of the new routes are already operational including the Mira Road railway station to Dahisar metro station which was started on Monday, February 13 this week. According to BEST officials, as and when more Metro services will be operational in Mumbai, they will be adding more new routes to provide last-mile connectivity to its commuters.

As per the BEST authority, the idea is how to make the public transport system more efficient and reliable for passengers. "We have to have the end-to-end solution from starting point to destination point for commuters to travel hassle-free. We are working on an integrated mobility kind of solution," said Lokesh Chandra, general manager of BEST.

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According to BEST, they are looking at the new travel patterns of the commuters after the new Metro lines 2A and 7 started functioning.

Explaining the travel pattern they learned, Chandra said, "Some of the areas are not having bus service right now, while in some places there are already bus services, but then these buses which are coming from some other point are already overcrowded. We are working on starting the new routes where the route is not existing."

"The moment that metro lines become functional, there are certain changeover points where the person travels from one location point to another location point, and then from there, he gets into the metro. Eg: Andheri (Gundavli station), and Dahisar metro station, are points where people are coming from different areas to that particular points to get into the metro. We are studying these travel patterns and accordingly, we have designed all these routes," he further added.

"We are working very closely with MMRDA. The aim is to provide a public transport solution to the people so that they need not go back to their own private vehicles," Chandra said.

Also Read: Mumbai: BEST introduces new route for commuters travelling from Mira Road to Dahisar metro station

Speaking about the travel study that the BEST has worked on earlier and how it impacted the ridership to grow from 22.5 lakhs to 35 lakhs, Chandra said, "The data shows us that in Mumbai, 85 per cent of people travel by bus for approximately up to seven kilometers and then to travel beyond 12 km, there are hardly two to three per cent commuters. So based on the data and travel pattern, we did the route reservation where we either reduced the waiting time or we have improved the frequency from 45 mins-1 hour waiting time on some routes now bringing down the time to less than 20 minutes. This year, by deploying 7,000 buses, the waiting time on all the routes across the city will be reduced to less than 10 minutes."

According to BEST, the impact of these interventions will help them to increase the daily ridership which is presently 35 lakh. "I am sure we will be crossing 40 lakhs ridership very soon once we have more buses in our fleet, and this will also reduce our operational costs," Chandra said.