PMPML to rent out buses on weekends

PUNE: The Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Limited (PMPML) has decided to make its buses available on rent on an eight-hour-shift basis on weekends. The move is expected to help the transport body in increasing its revenue.

“Fewer number of passengers travel during the day on weekends. The operations always are in a loss at that time. A decision has been taken to make non-AC buses available to be hired for tours. The buses can be rented from either 6 am to 2 pm or from 2 pm to 10 pm at Rs 8,000 per shift. Those wanting the buses for the full day will have to shell out Rs 16,000. The buses will be available only on Saturday and Sunday,” said a senior PMPML officer.

As per the official, between Monday and Friday, the PMPML has an average daily revenue of Rs 1.5 to Rs 1.7 crore. On Saturday and Sunday, it comes down to Rs 1.2 to Rs 1.3 crore. Thus, the daily average dips by Rs 25 to 30 lakh. As per officials, the State government’s recent decision of having five working days in the week would reduce the revenue further due to fall in ridership.

“The idea behind the initiative is to increase the revenue on weekends so that there aren’t any low-revenue days and it does not bring down the monthly revenue figures,” said PMPML Traffic Manager Anant Waghmare. 

A recent audit report of the trasnport utility submitted to the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) had revealed that all 428 routes (on which buses operate) were incurring losses. This means that operational expenditure exceed the revenue 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. Compared to the shorter routes, the average loss on longer routes, ranging between 11 to 20 kilometres, was higher, the report pointed out. There are a total of 155 routes that fall in this bracket and the restructuring of the routes may be necessary to reduce the losses.