MSRTC sees major drop in passengers

From the last one month, the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) is facing several issues in running the bus service, as the daily passengers count has reduced drastically

From the last one month, the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) is facing several issues in running the bus service, as the daily passengers count has reduced drastically. On the Pune - Mumbai route the daily passenger number has reduced to half.

HT Image

Now, on a daily basis most of the buses go vacant or with very few passengers on major routes from Pune. The drivers and workers are demanding to reduce the bus schedule to avoid further losses.

“As the number of Covid cases are increasing from the last one month, it is impacting the overall bus operations across the state. Before lockdown, daily around 65 lakhs passengers would travel by around 16,000 buses running on the road. The daily income which was upto ₹10 crore after September last year which has again started going down in the last one month. Currently, ₹1.5 crore is spent on diesel for buses unnecessarily,” said Sandeep Shinde, state president of MSRTC workers’ registered union.

The three major ST stands in the Pune division, Swargate, Shivajinagar and Pune railway station are connected to the entire state by various routes, however, very few passengers have been using them.

“The Pune to Mumbai bus service has impacted the most and it’s ridership has gone down by more than half. Our demand is that the organization should not make their own losses and then blame drivers and staff for not getting the passengers on board.” added Shinde.

Talking on anonymity, one of the drivers on the Pune to Sangli route said, “Daily I wait more than half an hour than the scheduled departure time to get passengers from Swargate stand but there has been a major drop in people travelling and we hardly get five to ten passengers, sometimes even the bus goes empty.”

Ramakant Gaikwad, MSRTC Pune division controller said, “There is certainly a drop in passengers from the last few weeks due to the increase in Covid cases. If any route has a major drop then we take a call and cancel that bus than to send it empty and waste diesel.”