[Dieseltuned]

Originally Posted by ksameer1234

I am sure you are not making the figure up and many buses do have non-functional electronic displays but I'll put non-functional ones to be at 10% or less. My reference is about an hour spent daily waiting for buses. That said, I do agree that there is no reason for these displays to not work.



Agree that the ad-covered buses are not at all pleasing sight. Yet, BEST seems to be on right track with newer buses coming up quick. The Tata ones with automatic transmission are pretty comfortable and fast enough to keep pace with traffic on highway. Also, Olectra electric buses (both ac and non-ac) are absolute delight.


There has actually been quite an increase in passengers due to fare reduction. Especially for short distances where fare came down from Rs. 8 to 5 which directly competes with share-autos.

Passenger count on BEST has gone back to 35 lacs.

[vharihar]

Originally Posted by performance plumbing

Came across this story on ACI website, they've put it up from their archives it seems but what a pic, they are slaloming a double decker! http://www.autocarindia.com/Feature/...ouble8217.aspx

See:

https://www.opindia.com/2018/02/the-...ot-to-explain/

From around the time Uttam Khobragade took over BEST, it's decline began. I was there in Mumbai for an extended period around that time, and can personally vouch for this!

And today's BEST is so very crappy. Very few buses seen on roads (even well before the pandemic). Bus patronization is bad. Bus maintenance is bad too. Worse, the fleet has a mixed bag composition of buses of all shapes and sizes (which also makes maintenance difficult), and an overly large reliance on *wet leases*. All the ingredients that indicate a scam at work (for past 15 years), money for spares etc being siphoned away, etc. Once this culture of corruption sets in its very difficult to root it out. It's hard to believe this is the same BEST that used to be a symbol of efficiency up until late 1990s. The following article from this month reiterates some of the issues:

https://www.mid-day.com/mumbai/mumba...aking-23176984

Just what kind of circus is the BEST running nowadays?!? Fleet composition changes just like that on someones whim and fancy, and probably in a clandestine manner or by a select, unofficial *coterie*? It's starting to become like Pune's PMT of the 1980s/90's!

[vharihar]

Originally Posted by ksameer1234

I am sure you are not making the figure up and many buses do have non-functional electronic displays but I'll put non-functional ones to be at 10% or less. My reference is about an hour spent daily waiting for buses. That said, I do agree that there is no reason for these displays to not work.



Agree that the ad-covered buses are not at all pleasing sight. Yet, BEST seems to be on right track with newer buses coming up quick. The Tata ones with automatic transmission are pretty comfortable and fast enough to keep pace with traffic on highway. Also, Olectra electric buses (both ac and non-ac) are absolute delight.


There has actually been quite an increase in passengers due to fare reduction. Especially for short distances where fare came down from Rs. 8 to 5 which directly competes with share-autos.

You perhaps haven't seen the bus patronization in the 1990s. Despite good fleet size (for that time), buses were ubiquitous on the roads, and they yet used to be crowded, an indication of good patronization.

Nowadays (even before the pandemic), in comparison, I don't see many BEST buses on the roads. And not very crowded either. Clearly they aren't the commuters choice.

[Anwesh]

Originally Posted by vharihar

You perhaps haven't seen the bus patronization in the 1990s. Despite good fleet size (for that time), buses were ubiquitous on the roads, and they yet used to be crowded, an indication of good patronization.

Nowadays (even before the pandemic), in comparison, I don't see many BEST buses on the roads. And not very crowded either. Clearly they aren't the commuters choice.

There is a big positive change since last year. This is partly due to the pandemic, and rejigging by BEST in many cases.

I commuted extensively within Mumbai between the two waves, and noted the increased frequency on various routes at major transit points such as Sion circle, Dadar t. t. , Opera house etc. Best has introduced mini and midi buses, most of them a/c on many routes. These are Force Traveller and Tata Marcopolo. The fares are very competitive, and most of these are plying on routes where they are competing with share taxis and riks. The larger buses are servicing trunk routes.

A case study :
Route 102 is circular route originating and ending at Grant road station east connecting to Paydhonie etc. It earlier operated cng non.a/c midi buses, based AL Lynx chassis with traditional fabricated BEST body. Most of the times, these would depart half empty while the public crammed in Eco share taxis, 8 or 9 pax instead of the authorised 5.

Route 104 and 105 originated from Kamla Nehru Park and J Mehta road, crossed the Grant road bridge and went up to Paydhonie before returning, these are also circular routes. They were serviced by standard 10.5 length non a/c single Decker's.

Since the demolition of the Grant road bridge, buses on104 and 105 are terminating at Grant road station west and returning. Buses are now a/c Tata Marcopolo midis on 102, 104 and 105. Conductors are standing on the bus stops to regulate queues and issue tickets in advance. Average waiting time is 5 minutes or even less, and people are now preferring the buses to cramped share cabs.

Regards,

[Anwesh]

Originally Posted by vharihar

See:

https://www.opindia.com/2018/02/the-...ot-to-explain/

From around the time Uttam Khobragade took over BEST, it's decline began. I was there in Mumbai for an extended period around that time, and can personally vouch for this!

And today's BEST is so very crappy. Very few buses seen on roads (even well before the pandemic). Bus patronization is bad. Bus maintenance is bad too. Worse, the fleet has a mixed bag composition of buses of all shapes and sizes (which also makes maintenance difficult), and an overly large reliance on *wet leases*. All the ingredients that indicate a scam at work (for past 15 years), money for spares etc being siphoned away, etc. Once this culture of corruption sets in its very difficult to root it out. It's hard to believe this is the same BEST that used to be a symbol of efficiency up until late 1990s. The following article from this month reiterates some of the issues:

https://www.mid-day.com/mumbai/mumba...aking-23176984

Just what kind of circus is the BEST running nowadays?!? Fleet composition changes just like that on someones whim and fancy, and probably in a clandestine manner or by a select, unofficial *coterie*? It's starting to become like Pune's PMT of the 1980s/90's!

Are you in Banglore or Mumbai?
If you are not in Mumbai then I would request you to take tabloid reports with a pinch of salt.

The committee members are talking about double deckers being replaced by smaller buses. Look at route 332, which was once the most profitable route, playing DDs Andheri to Kurla. Encroachments at Kamani and traffic jams at Saki naka increased, stretching the commute time from half an hour to one hour and even beyond that. I once spent nearly two hours in that bus, the distance end to end is 6 or 7 kms.
So the commuters abandoned this route and shifted to share riks ( the major contributor to traffic jams) and the metro. When the BMC tries to clear enchrochments the politicians prevent that.

BEST is displaying the flexibility today that should have been shown twenty years ago. But, better late than never. In fact, what Mumbai needed was BRT along the median of the road and not the metro.

Sticking to one or two types of large buses in the present situation would be like using fax machines today. BEST has realised that and is changing gears. Calling those efforts a circus is incorrect.

Regards,

[navin_v8]

Here's an article mentioning retiring buses acquired under MUTP project. These buses had semi air suspension, low floor base, fuel injected Hino engine, etc. They were pure turbodiesel workhorses and I can vouch while commuting from D.N. Nagar to Sakinaka in these during 2005 to 2007. The turbo whistle from these buses were eargasmic and they had torque and pickup to match the traffic unlike those snail pace CNG converted buses. I remember travelling in this same model to Vashi from Andheri and boy that turbo diesel Hino engine was whistling and singing on the Sion-Panvel highway towards Vashi bridge. Amazing speed and comfort.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...w/83512135.cms

[vharihar]

Originally Posted by Anwesh

Are you in Banglore or Mumbai?
If you are not in Mumbai then I would request you to take tabloid reports with a pinch of salt.

The committee members are talking about double deckers being replaced by smaller buses. Look at route 332, which was once the most profitable route, playing DDs Andheri to Kurla. Encroachments at Kamani and traffic jams at Saki naka increased, stretching the commute time from half an hour to one hour and even beyond that. I once spent nearly two hours in that bus, the distance end to end is 6 or 7 kms.
So the commuters abandoned this route and shifted to share riks ( the major contributor to traffic jams) and the metro. When the BMC tries to clear enchrochments the politicians prevent that.

BEST is displaying the flexibility today that should have been shown twenty years ago. But, better late than never. In fact, what Mumbai needed was BRT along the median of the road and not the metro.

Sticking to one or two types of large buses in the present situation would be like using fax machines today. BEST has realised that and is changing gears. Calling those efforts a circus is incorrect.

Regards,

I grew up in Pune and Mumbai, spending 25 years in that region, up until mid 1990's. Am a Punekar and Mumbaikar in every sense :-). And then again had an occasion to spend 4 years in Mumbai in the first decade of this century.

As regards your point about flexibility, small buses, etc that you're saying, I beg to differ. For a linear and long city like Mumbai, I'd prefer an overwhelming large majority of the fleet plying as large buses on the main trunk routes (for the most part) as long routes. That's what makes routes attractive to all mix of commuters. If a long route connects a *somewhat linearly* located set of suburbs of A, B, C, D and E, then that enables A-E commuters (arguably a small fraction of commuters) as well as all combinations of intermediate commuters (B-D, C-E, etc, arguably a large fraction of commuters). Then there can be other *somewhat linear* long routes which have a small overlap (say in segment B-C) with this long route. This maximizes the usefulness of the bus network.

And in the above proposal where most buses are plying on main trunk routes for the most part, large buses shouldn't be a problem. This indeed used to be the pattern of BEST route network earlier.

Short routes have the problem that people need to change buses often. No one likes doing that.

As regards small buses, too many small buses make them inefficient (fuel economy wise). For example: A bus that is half the size of a fullsize bus, isn't going to have twice the fuel economy of the fullsize bus. It'll probably be more like 1.7x the fuel economy.

I'm not totally against minibuses, but they can be limited to local area routes like within a suburb (eg. various areas of Mulund to Mulund station).

This cacophony of Tempo Travellers, and various body styles is what annoys me, viz. the mixed fleet composition. Heck, nowadays you find (as BEST buses): Tempo Travelers, AL mini buses, AL/Tata midi buses with rear door flush against rear end, Tata/AL buses with sometimes 1 or sometimes 2 windows behind rear entrance, Tata buses with front exit between front and rear wheels (these are rare, but do exist), and lastly Tata/AL buses with exit gate flush with front end (this is good). On top of that, you have a mix of Tata and AL buses (BEST in its best days was never like this, it was a full blown AL loyalist). Then there are some with vertically sliding windows, some with horizontally sliding windows. Then among Tata buses itself you have the ACGL kinds and the non-ACGL kinds. Total circus!

Such a heterogeneous mix makes bus maintenance difficult (even more so when the mix is assigned to the same depot). Throw in some corruption and that makes matters worse.

As regards double-deckers, I don't like the direction there either. There is a way to remain profitable even with double-deckers. The main objection to DD is they require 3 staff. This can be fixed to 2 staff or even 1 staff (over time) as follows:

Keep only 1 conductor, let him stand in lower deck and make him give tickets for lower and upper decks. If this means redesigning flight of stairs, so be it. Better still, move to a day pass or season ticket system, and keep gate near driver, like in London. Then 1 staff alone suffices, no need of conductors

If 1 conductor is a bottleneck (very likely), maybe install an automatic app/QR based scanner and fare collection system. BEST just needs to keep a scanner at entry gate (near driver). Doable, but admittedly a big change, may not happen. But even if not for this, it is still possible to remain profitable with DDs with 3 staff, I feel, for the kind of crowd India offers. Its laughable if one says that one can't make a profit even with such a huge customer base. BEST is dishing out bullshit when it says otherwise.

In the 1990's, we hardly had any mini buses. But yet bus patronization was at all time high, despite a high fraction of in-service buses and buses being ubiquitous on the roads, and 95% of them being fullsize buses, and a large fraction of them being long routes.

[AkMar]

Originally Posted by Anwesh

Are you in Banglore or Mumbai?
If you are not in Mumbai then I would request you to take tabloid reports with a pinch of salt.
Regards,

I take strong objection to this statement. Just like we at Team BHP are car enthusiasts, a bus enthusiast group which I am part of, has contributed to this news report. The journalist is a respected name in transport journalism scene in Mumbai, has also authored 3 books.

Coming to the topic. What flexibility are you talking about? What on earth can justify scrapping 1200+ buses with 47-49 seats & bringing in replacements having just 20-30 seats? BEST has no concrete fleet renewal program. They religiously scrap buses at 15 years of age but replacements are not planned at all. In the lockdown, why didn't the flexible management request the state government or any other competent authority to extend registration of their buses to provide more capacity? The buses scrapped in lockdown could have easily lasted for 2 years more.

The Tempo Travellers & MIDI buses are run on long routes where they are totally misfit. Why? Because BEST simply doesn't have bigger buses for these routes. With local trains not open for all, crowds at major bus stops have swelled. There was a tender for wet leasing 600 12 meter CNG buses but for reasons best known to them, it has been reduced to 400.

Then there are conductorless buses, a masterstroke of flexible management. In this, a conductor is deputed at bus stop (starting point and some important bus stops on the way) to give tickets & the bus itself doesn't have conductor. This concept started with feeder routes where it worked well. SO the flexible management went ahead and implemented it on long routes. Who on earth does that? The result was, buses ran empty due to lack of on board conductor & passengers were kept waiting at stops till a bus with conductor arrived.

EDIT: One of my friends has written about fleet shortage in detail, it can be read here.

[Anwesh]

Originally Posted by vharihar

I grew up in Pune and Mumbai, spending 25 years in that region, up until mid 1990's. Am a Punekar and Mumbaikar in ing fullsize buses, and a large fraction of them being long routes.

Good for you that you were in Mumbai Pune belt during the last century, but you are not around here in the current situation and are thus deprived of first hand experiences on which to base your comments.

When I said flexibility, I was referring to the case study of route #102, 104,105 that I discussed in the previous post.

Am fully aware of trunk and feeder route operation. As per your example about ABCDE areas of the city, it was infact a large number of passengers on BEST trunk routes were those who travelled from AB to DE. This was the situation till about twenty years ago. These passengers started abandoning BEST as the commute times increased due to escalating traffic. The economic progress meant that many of them could now afford their own vehicle, or they shifted to the trains, preferring the overcrowding as they reached in time.

I myself like large buses, would be very happy if the BEST fleet is 100% double deckers. But for those to be viable, the average speed has to be 20 kmph end to end of the route. The traffic problems have meant that on many routes the speed has dropped to single digits, and that is causing huge losses to BEST. The few surviving profitable routes like #700 have good average speeds of around 20 kmph.

You are comparing the fuel efficiency of large buses and minibuses. That is only one parameter out of many to calculate overall efficiency of operation. On clogged roads the smaller bus with a good powerful engine like the Traveller or Tata Marcopolo is able to complete trips in lesser time, and hence can generated more revenue earning milage than a large bus.
Another problem that BEST has with HCV CNG fueled buses is that they run out of fuel by the afternoon and have to return to the depot for refueling. This increases dead milage and reduces the availability of the bus for revenue generating trips.
BEST and NMMT tried to solve this problem during JNNURM 2. They asked AL to provide extra tanks. These were incorporated but set off a new problem. The tanks were fixed on the ROH section of the chassis frame. As that section is supported only at the rear axle side, the tanks vibrated. These vibrations transferred to the body and caused cracks above the rear door. You can see the repair patches above the door on most of these JNNURM 2 buses.

Fuel efficiency of the Force Traveller is about double that of a HCV bus. The Tata buses are a bit less, but still satisfactory.

You are saying that Force Travellers create cacophony. In fact they are the most silent buses. The original design is of the Mercedes Benz Transporter, it has a full monocoque bodyshell like a car. The OM 611 engine that powers it is a highly advanced MB design.

In fact the most cacophonous bus the BEST fleet is the AL Lynx Midi. You can almost hear it as soon as it departs from the previous stop, that, I suppose is a good feature.

QUOTE
Tempo Travelers, AL mini buses, AL/Tata midi buses with rear door flush against rear end, Tata/AL buses with sometimes 1 or sometimes 2 windows behind rear entrance, Tata buses with front exit between front and rear wheels (these are rare, but do exist), and lastly Tata/AL buses with exit gate flush with front end (this is good). On top of that, you have a mix of Tata and AL buses (BEST in its best days was never like this, it was a full blown AL loyalist
END OF QUOTE

The only buses with rear doors flush against the rear end are AL Lynx semi low floor cng midibuses. 50 units of these buses were picked up under JNNURM 1.

There are no Tata buses with exit behind the front axle. You have mistaken the first generation AL Lynx midis for Tata. These Lynx did not have the requisite FOH for the exit ahead of the axle, so a wide single entry /exit was provided in the middle. This proved to be a bottleneck, so another one was made later at the back by removing one seat. See pics.

Do you know that the AL service to BEST improved after the Tata order? The pricing for new buses also improved.

I have been a AL fan since childhood. After working inside the industry for more than 25 years I know everybody is equal when it comes to product technology.

To be continued.............

[vharihar]

Originally Posted by Anwesh

Good for you that you were in Mumbai Pune belt during the last century, but you are not around here in the current situation and are thus deprived of first hand experiences on which to base your comments.

...

... double deckers. But for those to be viable, the average speed has to be 20 kmph end to end of the route. The traffic problems have meant that on many routes the speed has dropped to single digits, ...

...On clogged roads the smaller bus with a good powerful engine like the Traveller or Tata Marcopolo is able to complete trips in lesser time, and hence can generated more revenue earning milage than a large bus.
Another problem that BEST has with HCV CNG fueled buses is that they run out of fuel by the afternoon and have to return to the depot for refueling. This increases dead milage and reduces the availability of the bus for revenue generating trips.
BEST and NMMT tried to solve this problem during JNNURM 2. They asked AL to provide extra tanks. These were incorporated but set off a new problem. The tanks were fixed on the ROH section of the chassis frame. As that section is supported only at the rear axle side, the tanks vibrated. These vibrations transferred to the body and caused cracks above the rear door. You can see the repair patches above the door on most of these JNNURM 2 buses.

Fuel efficiency of the Force Traveller is about double that of a HCV bus. The Tata buses are a bit less, but still satisfactory.

You are saying that Force Travellers create cacophony. In fact they are the most silent buses. ...
.........

I visit Mumbai every year and spend 2-3 weeks there. And I observe buses closely in every trip.

Regarding cacophony, I used it figuratively. I didn't mean the sound aspect of Tempo Travelers. I meant an uncontrolled mix.

Though as you mention, the Lynx buses and some others sound awful.

The move to CNG has been a disaster. I wish they'd remained with diesel buses, esp since Mumbai's particulate matter ranking was far better than other Indian metros.

Overall several steps of BEST have in effect been a retrograde step, making it worse than before.

Earlier you'd never see a non-functional route display info, in the days when it was roller cloth based. Ever since electronic displays were adopted, I routinely see both the electronic display as well as roller cloth based thing being non-functional.

I read somewhere that the electronic displays get spoilt during bus washing. They just need to consult BMTC as to how they manage it, despite having extremely well maintained and clean buses. My guess is that in BMTC buses, all components of the electronic displays are mounted in the total *interior* of the bus, specifically in the region that is certified to be waterproof.

I agree with you about affluence making people switch to Ola/Uber. But this threat used to exist before too in the suburbs, with share autos.

[vharihar]

Talking about retrograde steps, the move to replace bench seats with individual seats is also a retrograde step I feel. The old bench seats were far more comfortable than the individual seats that you see nowadays. They also looked and aged better. The individual seats age very badly.

Also, some changes like making the rear entry gate wider, actually makes it more dangerous, even more so with parts of a non-rigid and flappable closeable gate to grab on to.

There's a saying: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

BEST seems to have violated this adage. It was near to perfection 25 years ago. About the only thing that needed fixing was adoption of electronic display boards and electronic ticketing. They could have just adopted these two. Instead, they went ahead and changed left, right and center the bus body interior specs, engine specs, bus body lengths, gate positions and gate sizes and royally messed it up in the process.

[Anwesh]

Originally Posted by AkMar

I take strong objection to this statement. Just like we at Team BHP are car enthusiasts, a bus enthusiast group which I am part of, has contributed to this news report.

Nice to hear about your group. So, let me tell you a little about myself.

Am 56 years old and have a passionate automotive interest since I was a toddler. Was riding BEST buses unescorted since I was seven years old, just because I wanted to ride a double-decker, I would borrow 25 paise from my mother and off I would go for a long upper deck ride.

By 1986 the interest culminated in kicking off a career in the automotive sector. After about three years of dabbing in cars, switched over to CVs in 1989. Since 2000 to 2017, my work was entirely focused the bus sector. In India, I have handled products of AL, TATA, Allwyn Nissan, Eicher, Coronabus and also various reputed bus body manufacturers. In Africa, I handled MB buses. I was selling multiaxle MB/Marcopolo coaches when the Volvo B7R had just entered the Indian scene.

During the course of my jobs, I have been to the manufacturing plants of all the brands mentioned above. I have also had meetings with senior officials of BEST (including the chief at Electric House) and some other public transport undertakings.

Since 2011 up to 2017, I was an independent consultant during which apart from various other assignments, I have conducted viablety studies for private operators who were interested in participating in the PPP programme of public transport undertakings.

Since 2017, I have changed tracks and have been doing something that has no connection with anything automotive, but I have kept my interest alive and am in touch with the current scenario in the CV sector.

I do not know if the above makes me a certified enthusiast, but my comments are based on correct information gained through first hand experiences.

So, let's now discuss that midday report.

The gist of the report is that large buses have been replaced by Tempos. So, what is a Tempo?

Let's go through the links.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_Motors

https://www.forcemotors.com/history

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo_(company)


From the first link above
The word Tempo (a registered trade mark of Daimler) is now generic for any small goods carrier in India.[6]


The above information tells us that in India, Bajaj Tempo Ltd made small sub one tonne goods carriers, with technical collaboration of a German company known as Tempo. Today, such small goods carriers are called Tempos. Bajaj Tempo later became Force Motors Ltd, and besides other products, their portfolio consists of modern minibuses and midibuses. These are based on the Mercedes Benz T1 transporter. Force has taken the basic technology and developed vehicles that are much larger than the original MB version.

The original
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_TN

Smaller version of the Force Traveller based on the above.
https://www.forcemotors.com/vehicle/traveller-3050

The Traveller 26 that is in the BEST fleet
https://www.forcemotors.com/vehicle/traveller-26

It is obvious from the above that the Force Traveller26 supplied to BEST is a proper midibus of 6 tonnes GVW, 7 meters length. It is NOT a small goods carrier, so it CANNOT BE referred to as a Tempo.

Conclusion:
The part of the linked midday report that calls the BEST midibuses as Tempos is incorrect.

The second point of the report talks about these midibuses playing on routes serviced by standard buses. It does not give details of route numbers, number of schedules on that route where the midibuses replaced larger buses, whether total number of schedules remained the same or were increased. Such information would make the report creditable. If your group of enthusiasts is serious, they should visit the depot manager, obtain data on above lines, and give to to Mr. Aklekar, that would be a proper contribution.

I travelled almost every day by bus when the first lockdown was lifted, and noted that the majority of shortage off large buses was made up by MSRTC buses, 1000 of these were brought in, and they had a conductor in each bus. This was a stopgap measure, despite that vested interests started a propaganda campaign against them, hastening their withdrawal.

Quote:
EDIT: One of my friends has written about fleet shortage in detail, it can be read here.

I wrote to your friend and asked him to correct the model name for the double decker and also his comments about Tata CNG buses. The corrections are not yet reflecting.

Regards,

[Mechb63]

Does anyone remember those yellow-coloured 'bendy' buses that were used by BEST? With everyone nostalgic about the demise of the good old double-decker, I just can have some glimpses of the yellow bus in my head.

I traveled in one as a young kid and remember that there were two conductors, one for each section and I did get a scolding for standing in the 'bendy' section of the vehicle.

If I am not mistaken, it was 461, which took us from Malad to a relative in Mulund via the JVLR.

[LazyDriver]

An old video from 1998 with all the BEST buses during that era. Quite nostalgic.

https://youtu.be/XTnJt4-t_AE?si=L7ca5KkxTIKda1FQ

[vharihar]

Originally Posted by LazyDriver

An old video from 1998 with all the BEST buses during that era. Quite nostalgic.
https://Youtu.be/XTnJt4-t_AE?si=L7ca5KkxTIKda1FQ

Ah, naturally aspirated diesel engine sounds, music to the ears! And nice bench seats, which were so much more cushiony and comfortable than today's bucket seats.

The engine sounds, bell sounds, and horn sounds all sound fantsatic!