3 Months after a new Service!

So NMMT is very proud of their Volvo Service! There are many who travel regularly in the bus too. I have seen about 8 – 10 buses in the depot at night. The buses are maintained very well, the service folks wash the bus every night and make sure that the buses are neat and clean.

There are many who are curious about the service and search a lot, no wonder my first post about NMMT Volvo has had 440 hits & Wait Wait & Wait… But you may never find your NMMT! has had 44 visits, that is 484 visits to my blogs out of the 1, 111 till date (29th Sept 09). Which is 43.56%.

NMMT has indeed delivered a mode of transport that was never seen on the public roads of Mumbai but does merely delivering a mode of transport suffice the purpose? Isn’t management of the service an ongoing basis a very significant part of the deliverable? And most importantly… Isn’t maintaining the existing lot of non Volvo buses of the fleet an equally important job?

Here are some points to ponder.

1. Shouldn’t there be a supervisor who maintains a queue at Bandra? There is always a mad rush of people to get into the bus, people are supposed to maintain a Queue which is quite absent in our culture. I don’t blame everyone because if there are only a handful of people who believe in queues and a hell lot of mad ones don’t give a damn about queues, the former ones are gonna be at disadvantage.

I don’t know how it works out in Belapur. If you could throw some light via comments, it would definitely be helpful to other readers.

BEST beats NMMT here as they have the advantage of the depot and a queue system.

2. Shouldn’t the frequency be more smarter? The buses are supposed to leave every 20 mins from Bandra but this is pretty stupid at rush hours, thanks to the heavy traffic at Bandra, Sion, Chembur and other unexpected locations, you may find yourself waiting for the bus for over 45 mins at Bandra.

505s are more in number and pretty frequent too.

3. What about regular NMMTs? I am sure that lesser lucky commuters (like me ) to Navi Mumbai who have to take a regular NMMT eventually to reach their homes have to get into a rickety ill maintained bus. Isn’t maintaining the rest of the fleet like the Volvos necessary?

And as I have heard from conductors of NMMT, the supervisors don’t treat them well and the don’t heed to the repeated requests of drivers and conductors for better maintenance of buses. Many of us know how the roofs of the buses leaks during the monsoon and how frequently the buses breaks down. Not to mention how the drivers “follow” the “rule” of not allowing people to get in from the front and how they simply choose to ignore most of the traffic rules!

I am neither supporting or opposing any transport body, I am just a regular commuter who tries to reach his destination in the easiest & comfortably available mode of transport. Yeah, I do look for customer service but I do realize that I can’t expect to be treated like a king everywhere

By the way, next time you have issues with an ill maintained bus or a misbehaving driver or conductor or if you need any assistance about the NMMT service, here is the number of the Thurbe Depot- 022-2784 6724. I have observed many people searching for the bus schedule and the route, the above number can help you with it.

Novin