For a dedicated Mumbai Airport bus shuttle, here are a few approaches that can be considered to make it an economically-viable success
Mumbai is a remarkable city in many ways. It has an airport which is almost in the centre of the city. It has one of the highest usage rates of public transport for commuting. It has one of the lowest available areas of road space per 1,000 persons/vehicle. Buses and trains together account for more than a crore trips/day and public transport share is perhaps the highest in absolute numbers and percentage of total trips in any city in the world. Travelling by bus is not considered infra dig by most in Mumbai.
There is every reason for Mumbaikars to use a bus to go and return from the airport. Such bus services are available in cities such as London, New York, Paris, Rome, Tokyo, Singapore and also in cities like Delhi, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Hyderabad in India too.
Mumbai airport—like the city—is perhaps the most congested airport in India. This is one more reason why we must have a proper bus service to and from the airport to various parts of the city. Today, about 60,000 passengers travel to international destinations every day whereas travellers to Indian destinations amount to over 1,00,000 per day. Typically, most international flights operate during the night and domestic destinations are served from early morning at 5.30am to 11pm in the night. I have been writing to MIAL (Mumbai International Airport Ltd) and BEST for the past three years about a bus service to the airport but there has been a very indifferent response.
Moneylife should be complimented for giving a thrust to this demand (please scroll below for related articles). It is very strange that BEST should have shown a lack of interest in such a service, demanding that unless an exclusive bus lane is provided, it cannot start such a service. This is an absurd position. An airport service will serve as a precursor for dedicated bus lanes in a variety of forms for Mumbai. BEST (together with NMMT, or Navi Mumbai Municipal Transport, and TMT, or Thane Municipal Transport) should have the first option to provide such a service and if these entities are not willing, the option should be offered to private operators to provide such a service. BEST has now over 300 A/C buses and it can't deploy them in an efficient and profitable manner. The current A/C buses which ply shorter distances, carry fewer passengers and don't earn more revenue than ordinary buses per day—when the fares for A/C buses and the investment in an A/C bus are quite high as compared to an ordinary bus.
Today ordinary buses do operate via airports, but not from/to the airports. They are not very easily accessible for passengers with bags and not at the arrival/departure areas which are accessible only for cars and taxis. Prepaid taxis are expensive and the quality of service leaves much to be desired. It is also not easy to get fleet taxies operated by Meru, Mega and other brands. While the new management at the airport is making it easier for people to board cars (provided they have drivers!), there is no thought given to a bus as an option.
In the past—about 30 years back, there used be a private bus service—first operated by Indian Airlines and then the Ex-Servicemen's Co-op Society. But now there is no visible bus service while the number of passengers is rising very rapidly—over 12% annually! Today the airport handles more passengers than CST and Mumbai Central railway stations taken together. A bus service has to evolve over a period of time. But to begin with, we can run three routes from both terminals of the airport to south Mumbai up to Colaba, to the east up to Thane/Vashi and to the northeast up to Borivali (West). All these routes would have a length of about 40km to 50km from the airport. During the night, the round trip should be between 3 hours to 4 hours include stoppage time at both ends-this schedule can be maintained during the night. During the day, the trip time would increase by about 30% due to traffic congestion. I believe that taxis or cars won't run much faster—these vehicles would save perhaps about 15 to 20 minutes. They provide point-to-point services and that is difficult for buses to achieve. But still there is a large segment of passengers and other visitors who will utilise this bus service if we provide last-mile connectivity such as availability of taxis and autos at the stops of such a service, which is not difficult, especially during the night when parking would not be an issue. Taxi fares for final destinations like Vashi (Navi Mumbai) or Colaba (south Mumbai) or Borivali are as high as Rs500 (and more) for prepaid services in non-A/C taxies. The airport management has reduced the time between landing and exit to about 30/40 minutes. But it takes 10/15 minutes to get a taxi. The fare is only a part of the rationale for the bus service. Offering safe, reliable transportation for single persons is another.
Information, promotion and advertising are key ingredients
For a service like this to be useful and a very good alternative to unreliable taxis, we need to provide not only a number of good A/C buses but also a lot of information at the airport, on the stops and on the bus. There should be a route map and timetable for the service. We should also provide a GPS (Global Positioning System) which should tell the prospective passengers—especially at the intermediate stops—as to when the next bus would arrive. This is neither very expensive nor difficult. It should be first introduced at the airport bus service and then extended to all A/C and corridor-bus routes. This can be done both at the stops and via mobile phones through appropriate software. This service should be provided by BEST, TMT and NMMT services through an SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle) or a proper arrangement can be put in place for sharing common infrastructure, and these services can operate on the commonly agreed routes.
The state government should take a lead and ensure that we don't waste time in turf battles. Expenses on information infrastructure, provision of GPS, advertising and promotion must be treated as considered common infrastructure (just like providing roads) and should not be charged to the bus operator (whether it is BEST or MIAL). Similarly, all the information that is to be provided inside the airport must be the responsibility of MIAL as public transport must be considered as common public infrastructure.
Promotion, information on buses, stops, airport terminal billboards and media advertising are all very critical and must be given great importance and should not be ignored at all. This is the core issue, without which this will not achieve the kind of success it deserves, and this bus service has to usher in a virtuous cycle in the city—and hence it is all the more important.
(Ashok Datar is a Mumbai-based Transport activist).
You may also want to read:
For Mumbai Airport is a private bus shuttle the only solution?
Mumbai Airport does not have a shuttle service while other metros have excellent connections from their airports to cities
BEST will start a dedicated Mumbai Airport shuttle but it wants a dedicated lane
Why is the government of Maharashtra reluctant to address the Mumbai airport transport issue?
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What a shame. Maybe the BEST GM can be made in charge of taxiis, and a real public transport person brought in his place.
Also, in case he feels that BEST can not operate this service, then he or BEST should not object to anybody else running such a service.
Humbly submitted/vm