Pune: The Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Limited (PMPML) is facing financial crunch due to the coronavirus lockdown. To overcome this, the administration has now decided to rent out its buses to private companies.
As the lockdown began on March 24 and kept on extending for more than a month now, only 120 buses were running for essential services, and as many as 1,400 buses have been parked at various depots.
Many companies are located in Chakan, Hinjawadi, Bhosari, Chinchwad, Ranjangaon, and other areas. "These buses can be used to transport their employees. An agreement will be made between the company and PMPML. The buses will be made available to these companies every month as per the agreement. The rate will be Rs 83.50 per kilometre," said a senior officer of PMPML.
PMPML Traffic Manager Anant Waghmare said, "Companies can call on 020-24503300 or 9881495582 for details."
The PMPML authority prepared a similar proposal in February, and it was supposed to be executed from April this year. But due to coronavirus, the proposal could not be implemented.
As per the proposal, the PMPML had decided to increase revenues and will make its buses available for hire on an eight-hour-shift basis during the weekends. As per officials, the ridership of buses goes down on weekends, which makes their operation at regular frequency unnecessary and loss-making. The transport body has, hence, decided to make non-AC buses available to be hired for tours.
"The buses can be rented for either morning or afternoon eight-hour-shift (from 6 am to 2 pm, 2 pm to 10 pm), at Rs 8000 per shift. Those renting it for a full day will have to shell out Rs 16000. The buses will be available only on Saturday and Sunday." as mentioned in the proposal.
A recent audit report of the body submitted to Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) had revealed that all 428 routes (on which buses operate) were incurring losses. This means that operational expenditures exceeded the revenues generated by the buses on each of 428 routes.
As per the audit report, PMPML suffers an average loss of Rs 30.82 per kilometre. It also pointed out that when compared to shorter routes, the average loss on the longer route (ranging between 11 to 20 kilometres) was higher. There are a total of 155 routes that fall in this bracket and restructuring of the routes may be necessary to reduce the losses.
