London and Mumbai Buses

This morning I happened to read an interesting article on the local traffic conditions in the city. The article was written by Ashok Datar, Mumbai based transport expert and environmentalist. On visiting his website www.mesn.org, I found some further interesting facts -

- London has a fleet of 8000 busses, making it one of the biggest in the world, with over 6,000,000 passenger journeys made every weekday

- As of today Mumbai has a BEST fleet of 3900 busses

In London, there are separate bus lanes and this motivates commuters to use the bus service. There are 6800 busses being utilized daily. The average capacity of a Routemaster (London public bus) is 72 passengers, for double-decker bus.

Whereas in Mumbai there are 4.6 million passengers using bus services daily. There are 3500 daily operational busses with an average carrying capacity of 71 passengers per bus.


Looking in comparison -

London - The bus transport usage is increasing rapidly over the years and has increased by 40% since 2001.

Mumbai - There is a need for initiatives such as Mayor's Transport Strategy to be developed.

London population is 7.5 million whereas Mumbai's population is 15 million and counting. With a young and growing population there would be tremendous pressure on public transportation systems. With this understanding, it is assured that buses will play a significant role in daily passenger commute. As a result, Mumbai BEST buses will have to cater to a growing population with increasing demand, improvement in per bus seating capacity, seprate bus lanes would have to be created and eventually make bus transport attractive and appealing.

Sources -  http://www.mesn.org/
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/
http://www.redbuseventtransport.co.uk/

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