In a comprehensive report card prepared by Parisar, looking at 12 parameters under the 4 main parameters of comfort, convenience, affordability and reliability, PMPML scores a B grade.
PMPML has regularly published monthly performance statistics on its website for the past many years. The report card was devised so that the performance information of PMPML, which is often technical, can be decoded to identify patterns and trends, and interpret it so that everyone finds it easy to understand.
In doing so, a very detailed methodology based on three data sources, namely, PMPML official data, observation survey and user surveys conducted by Parisar have been combined to give a holistic view of how PMPML performs on the four mentioned parameters. The study was conducted at 41 bus stops, including 9 depots and 926 bus users were surveyed to understand their experience.
The last PMPML report card was published by Parisar in 2013, thus offering an interesting view of the trend over the past 10 years. This comparison brings out certain areas where PMPML has improved vastly from the last report card, namely, cleanliness, route reliability and bus station design. Around 13% of planned kilometres are cancelled, as compared to 26% in 2012-13. The percentage of off-road buses has also reduced significantly from 29% to 19% in the last 10 years.
While PMPML scores for affordability have improved, this study was done before the recent fare hike and this hike is bound to affect the affordability quotient of PMPML.
While there has been some give and take in all parameters studied, one striking thing is that ridership has only increased by 5% in the last 10 years, even as the area served by PMPML has increased, with services extending beyond PMC, PCMC and the cantonment boards. The number of buses per lakh population have decreased from 34 to 22 in the last 10 years, and ideally the city should have at least 60 buses per lakh population.
Click here to read the report card.