The withdrawal of 400 buses by BEST, had a cascading effect as many routes were affected though the undertaking said they had deployed 297 buses on affected routes.While trade unions called for the scrapping of wet-leasing buses urging BEST to buy their own, a team of engineers from Tata Motors arrived in the city to inspect the buses. For the unversed, buses which were taken off roads will be back in service only after a written assurance of safety is received from manufacturer TATA Motors.
The bus, running on route number 415, caught fire after reaching Agarkar Chowk outside Andheri (E) railway station at 6.55 pm. Although the bus was very crowded, the fire happened soon after all the passengers had alighted. While investigations are underway, officials said the probable reason for the fire was a spark in the engine. In a tweet, BEST said that in view of the recent incidents of fire in TATA CNG buses, operated by M/S Mateshwari Urban Transport Ltd, it had decided to take the entire fleet of 400 buses off the road till the manufacturer and operator took corrective measures to ensure that such incidents did not happen again.
Until Wednesday evening, BEST, which has over 35 lakh commuters, was running 3,270 buses every day, of which close to 1,300 are operated on a wet lease. Recently, the undertaking suspended another wet-lease operator who was running 260-odd buses. Thus effectively in the last few weeks, the BEST fleet has dropped by over 650 buses.“We want safety first,” emphasised Lokesh Chandra, general manager, BEST. “Some internal changes will be made to ensure that there is not much interruption on the heavy routes during peak hours.” A BEST official added that the undertaking had yet to ascertain which routes would be severely impacted by the withdrawal of the 400 buses. “However, our smaller buses to railway stations will continue, and so connectivity will remain,” he said. The first incident of fire occurred on January 25 with a CNG bus on the C-51 route. After leaving Santacruz Depot and on the way to Bandra, at 1.15 pm, the driver noticed a spark in the gear box, which was possibly due to a short circuit. The bus was completely charred. The second incident was on February 11 at Chakala junction on the Western Express Highway. The incident occurred around 3.15 pm, and no one was injured.