Gurugram’s bus ridership still a fraction of pre-Covid volume, no additional routes for now

Ridership on the city bus service has shown a steady daily increase ever since operations resumed on July 2 — after a three months hiatus — owing to the Covid-19

Ridership on the city bus service has shown a steady daily increase ever since operations resumed on July 2 — after a three months hiatus — owing to the Covid-19 outbreak.

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Since then, the bus service has ferried close to 100,000 passengers, mainly on long-distance routes to Sohna and Manesar, said officials in the Gurugram Metropolitan City Bus Ltd.

From 5,265 passengers on July 2 (when the service formally resumed partially), ridership too has more than doubled, with at least 12,300 passengers taking the bus service on July 16. Even so, the past week’s average ridership figures (about 10,000 passengers a day) is only a fraction of the service’s pre-Covid operations.

Gurugram was ferrying between at least 80,000 and 90,000 passengers on any given weekday in March, as per data available on the company website, before the Covid-19 pandemic started raging.

While the plan was to roll out Gurugram Metropolitan City Bus Ltd’s entire fleet of 200 buses by August, officials on Monday said that no additional vehicles (or routes) will be relaunched for the time being. “We have received a tepid response and ridership is still quite low. It has been decided to keep only 65 buses operational on six routes for the time being, till ridership increases,” said Vanita Akhaury, spokesperson, GMCBL.

“As expected, our flagship route, Route 212, to Basai via Huda City Centre and back, is not doing so well because the Metro is shut and many offices along the route have not yet opened up. Our ridership now comprises industry workers travelling to Manesar and back on Route 134B, and there is also a lot of movement between Sohna and Gurugram on Route 218. Route 122, from Sikanderpur Metro to Gurugram bus stand, is also doing a little better than Route 212,” Akhaury added.

GMCBL officials also stated that the ongoing pandemic has put considerable financial stress on the organisation, with revenue losses running to at least Rs. 8 crore, till June 15. “Our target revenue in March was about Rs 70 for every kilometre travelled. At the moment we are operating at about Rs 10 per kilometre, while the number of kilometres plied themselves are much lower than before,” said a senior official.

Akhaury added that no overcrowding has been observed on any routes so far, and officials are keeping a close watch on the buses’ cycle-times to ensure that social distancing is maintained among commuters. “Only 18 passengers are allowed to board any bus at one time, so we have had to run the buses on schedule. Without much traffic this has been easy, and the wait time for passengers has improved to between 12 and 15 minutes on each route,” she said.