As lakhs of people thronged Chaityabhoomi to pay tribute to Babasaheb Ambedkar on Mahaparinirvan Din, BEST counters selling daily passes saw unprecedented demand
Spending Rs 40 to travel throughout the city for a day seems like a pretty good deal. However, ever since the Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) Undertaking hiked the price of their daily passes from Rs 25, ticket sales have been slow. However yesterday, the transport undertaking struck gold, by selling bus passes to the crowds gathered outside Chaityabhoomi at Shivaji Park.
While thousands of people opted to purchase BEST daily passes rather than brave the crowds on the suburban trains, BEST officials said that the stalls had been present from December 5 itself, to allow visitors to buy passes there and tour the city using the public transport.
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Officials stated that the demand for these daily passes had gone down ever since the cost of each pass was hiked from Rs 25 to Rs 40 in November 2011. In fact, earlier in June it was revealed that demand had dropped from 2 lakh to a mere 10,000.
“We are expecting a huge sale of nearly 25,000 daily passes in the last two days. The reason was to allow people easy access to a tour of the city after paying tribute at Chaitya bhoomi,” said Ashok Patil, chairman, BEST committee.
Roughly calculated, the sale of these passes would amount to revenues of around Rs 10 lakh. BEST ran around 42 extra buses on 16 different routes to accommodate the increased passenger volumes.u00a0
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