Saturday, 25 July 2026 | Asia's First Monthly Magazine on e-Governance · Est. 2005

eINDIA 2015 – Ravikanth Deshpande, Deputy General Manager, BEST, Government of Maharashtra

BEST for mobility


Ravi-Kanth-DeshpandeAs the session lays focus on smart infrastructure for smart cities, at BEST, we are operators for public transport and we have been a major feeder to suburban trains. We also have parallel routes, but they are in patches. In Mumbai, mobility has become a big issue. Smart infrastructure is ensuring smart mobility via transportation in cities. The suburban trains and metros have dedicated lines, so they won’t be affected by mobility, but the public transport, which is the backbone of this city, is being affected.

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To improve this, we have 4,000 buses plying on 500 routes. We also operate in adjacent municipal corporation areas like Thane and many more, and have observed that people require fast movement, but due to congestion on the road, the mobility has become slow. When we think of smart city, we should think of a solution of fast mobility for citizens like Uber.

We cater to 3.8 million people. If we give them proper mobility, they will only use the public transport. What is required is a smart infrastructure like dedicated lanes for buses. BRTS is not an option, as it will not work in the congested lanes of Mumbai.


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