The Navi Mumbai Municipal Transport (NMMT) has reduced its trips by 35.83% with the number of passengers falling by 49.2% ever since a partial lockdown of the city was announced on Wednesday to curtail the spread of COVID-19.
NMMT had a dip in income by 46.53% till Wednesday. “The fixed passes have reduced drastically as people have stopped renewing them. Income has gone down by more than ₹15 lakh and hence we decided to reduce the number of trips,” said NMMT general manager Shirish Aradwad.
On an average, NMMT would ferry 2.50 lakh passengers. The number reduced to 1.95 lakh on March 3, with 72,328 at Turbhe depot, 67,039 at Asudgaon depot and 56,131 at Ghansoli depot. On Wednesday, it reduced further to 1.27 lakh, of which Turbhe, Asudgaon and Ghansoli depots had 48,470, 44,441 and 34,348 passengers respectively.
NMMT used to make a daily income of around ₹39 lakh but on March 3, the income dropped to ₹31.46 lakh. Turbhe, Asudgaon and Ghansoli depots made ₹11.15 lakh, ₹11.18 lakh and ₹9.13 lakh respectively.
This reduced further to ₹7.8 lakh, ₹7.65 lakh and ₹5.37 lakh respectively.
The average daily trips were 5,944, and Turbhe, Asudgaon and Ghansoli depots made 2,359, 2,366 and 1,219 trips respectively. On March 3, it went down by 19% to 4,778. Turbhe, Asudgaon and Ghansoli depots made 1,680, 1,977 and 1,121 trips respectively. The number dipped by 20% to 3,814 trips on March 18, and Turbhe, Asudgaon and Ghansoli depots made 1,336, 1,626 and 852 trips respectively. “The number of trips might go down even more if the number of passengers and income continue to fall. We are sanitising bus stops and buses three times a day and are also making sure every employee is sanitising himself after coming to work,” Mr. Aradwad said.
