A key issue affecting the operations of the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking was systematically resolved over the last few months after it teamed up with Ridlr to make over 5,000 electronic ticket issuing machines (ETIMs) operational.
Ridlr has been partnering with the undertaking for nearly two years to provide mobile ticketing services. “Extending our services to BEST provided us with the opportunity to impact and add value to a large section of people around the city. This association not only gave us deep insights into ways that can help us optimize operations but also enabled BEST to intelligently manage their data to ensure seamless day to day operations,” a company spokesperson said.
Ridlr started work on the project in March 2019 and is developing a new analytic software for the BEST that will allow the public transport undertaking to access the fare data and gain key insights into bus operations in the city.
“The data will, for instance, highlight deviations from bus schedules, throw up patterns for load factors across individual trips and routes and identify key stops where maximum passengers board and alight and other such data sets,” a company spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added that the company did face a few roadblocks in terms of getting information on the inventory and details pertaining to the software behind the ETIM but was able to successfully infuse new stock and modify important aspects of the system to ensure seamless execution.
Since March, they have managed to ensure supply to ETIMs for all buses across 27 depots of the BEST. They also helped set up a management information system, whose reports can be used to monitor operations on a daily basis.
BEST was forced to revert to old paper tickets for nearly seven months after running into issues with its former contractor Trimax Infrastructure over the repair and maintenance of existing ETIMs. The switch led to widespread criticism of the public transport provider and directly affected over two lakh pass-holders.
The matter was raised in several BEST committee meetings, with members highlighting the potential revenue loss to the undertaking due to the switch.
