Gurugram: 2 crore people rode city bus; ridership increases 3x in one year with launch of nine new routes

Gurugaman, the city bus service, reported an average daily ridership of 84,000 people in February, the same month it touched a cumulative ridership of 2 crore passengers.

Gurugaman, the city bus service, reported an average daily ridership of 84,000 people in February, the same month it touched a cumulative ridership of 2 crore passengers. This is up from 5,659 passengers per day in September 2018, when the service launched with just one route.

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Official data indicates a three-fold rise in ridership over the past year itself, coinciding with the launch of nine new routes. At present, the GMCBL operates 13 routes with a fleet of 154 buses.

Historically, the launch of new routes has been seen to benefit ridership numbers. For example, with the launch of four new routes since March 2019, the service’s cumulative ridership of 26,23,746 passengers (in March) rose to 51,902,945 in June. This number climbed further to touch 1,01,36,512 by September 28, 2019.

Official data indicates that GMCBL’s passenger count has doubled three times in the past year—first between March and June 2019, then between June and September 2019, and then between September 2019 and March 2020.

“In the last 18 months, we have seen significant improvement in the ridership. From 1.64 lakh passengers daily in September 2018, the ridership increased to 24.5 lakh passengers daily in February 2020. With each month, we have noticed an increase in ridership,” GMCBL chief executive officer Sonal Goel said while addressing a press conference at GMCBL office, sector 10.

Experts agreed that the trend is a positive one.

“An average passenger count of 84,000 per day is on par with other fledgling bus services in cities such as Bhubaneshwar and Indore, where between 70,000 and 1,00,000 passengers use the service per day, with fleets of about 200 buses. Hopefully, the latest Gurugaman passenger numbers will encourage the government to invest more in the city bus service,” transport expert Sarika Panda Bhatt said, adding that the trajectory of improvement, which is 5%-10% increase in daily ridership on a month-to-month basis, has to be maintained.

Bhatt, however, added that there is no way for experts to independently corroborate the GMBCL’s data.

“What we have are just select numbers. To truly gauge Gurugaman’s performance, the data needs to be provided in open, raw format, like the DMRC does, so authenticity of numbers can be checked. Several transport planners would readily provide their inputs on how to boost the numbers,” she said.