Wet lease e-bus delivery deadlines unmet, yet officials ‘rely hopelessly’ on contractors | Mumbai News

Mumbai: Commuter Kamlesh Samdhani appreciates the fact that he can travel at one-fourth the cost of a kaali-peeli taxi in south Mumbai if he takes a bus. But the catch is the long waiting time at stops. So, what’s gone wrong with BEST? Citizen activist Rishi Agarwal, director, Mumbai Sustainability Centre, blamed the decline on BEST’s plan over the past three to four years to bring in “only electric buses”, calling it the root cause of the fleet shrinking. “Today, the reality is that the electric bus market does not seem mature. If I go to the market, I can buy a CNG AC bus at the earliest, but for AC e-buses, I will have to wait six months to a year due to govt regulations, availability of spares and battery related issues, among others,” he said.He alleged that while wet leasing of the fleet was introduced in 2018 amid much fanfare, promising improvement in service, commuters have been the worst hit and have only suffered since then.BEST currently has just 556 buses of its own and even these will be off the roads in a year. The larger plan for the iconic transport body is to operate a vast fleet of wet lease buses, run by private contractors. But even this fleet of contractual buses has not risen over the past few years, resulting in acute shortage of buses on roads—the primary reason for people having to wait for 30 minutes to over an hour at many bus stops across the city.Transport analyst Hussain Indorewala from citizens’ group, Aamchi Mumbai Aamchi BEST, echoed this concern. “BEST is not willing to buy its own buses. It is hopelessly reliant on contractors for procuring these buses regardless of unmet delivery deadlines,” he said.Indorewala demanded that BEST not restrict itself to e-buses. “Any BEST bus is a green bus, occupying less road space than cars and carrying more passengers, reducing congestion, fuel cost and dissuading people from buying more private vehicles on the road,” he said.He added that BEST claims to have issued notices and penalties to contractors to expedite deliveries, but as an essential service, it cannot impose too many penalties since contractors can threaten to withdraw. “When that happens, BEST has no choice but to concede or face negative outcomes. Look what happened with the mini buses recently—the contractor withdrew 280 buses gradually after failed re-negotiations with BEST and the services were subsequently terminated”, resulting in nearly a 10% bus reduction, affecting 3-4 lakh daily commuters.TOI spoke to sources in Olectra Greentech, the biggest wet lease bus supplier for BEST. “Bus supply was delayed due to a shortage of electric bus chassis. Since e-bus batteries are mainly imported from China, external factors beyond our control caused supply disruptions,” said one of them. “Recently, battery supply improved. With Olectra’s new manufacturing facility capable of producing 10,000 buses annually, production has increased. More than 300 buses have been delivered in the last three months. As of today, 578 buses have been delivered, with 30 more expected by the end of this month. In the next two months, delivery is expected to exceed 100 buses per month.”The sources said another reason for delay in delivery for over a year was a court litigation by another private operator in the same contract. As per the contract, Evey, a subsidiary of Olectra, will procure the e-buses either directly or through its special purpose vehicle.Another wet lease operator Switch Mobility, supplying e-AC double-deckers, recently issued a statement: “We have requested BEST to increase the lease rent due to escalation of operational costs, which have been impacted by the latest norms and specifications set by the central govt. These modifications have led to an increase in the manufacturing costs of each bus.” Until these re-negotiations take place, the deadlock for procuring 150 more electric double-deckers will persist.According to BEST officials, procuring buses on wet lease was the “new normal” among most bus undertakings across the country and helped save significant costs and bring in efficiency. A senior BEST official said there was “zero tolerance” to delays in deliveries for all private contractors. As many as 32 official reminders were given to the contractors in the past three years for delivering buses on time, besides several notices and penalties were imposed as well for the delays, said a senior official.BEST general manager SVR Srinivas said, “We are expecting the deliveries to speed up as I am pushing for them. Another issue with the contractors is availability of drivers, which they said will be resolved soon.”