Pune Municipal Transport is Life Line of Pune. It was famous earlier as Public Murder Transport. Now, with merger of PCMT i.e. Pimpri Chnichwad Municipal Transport, its new name is PMPML, Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Limited.
Life Line of Pune: Fleet of PMPML comprises of old buses, mini buses, rented buses, low floor buses, Volvo buses and so on. It has been advocated to increase the number of buses so as to reduce traffic stress on Pune roads. Fleet is operational in two types of services, long distance route and short city services.
It caters all periphery areas of Pune like Wagholi, Lohagaon, Nigdi, Chinchwad, Paud Gaon, Talegaon Dabhade, Rajguru Nagar, Balewadi, Wakad, and Kapurol and so on. In city, frequency of buses is quite good. In outskirts waiting is required. Only 10% of commuters are bothered about timings of buses and they stand in wait for their ferry. Others board the buses as they come. Office hours are the peak traffic hours in buses everywhere.
This PMPML bus service has many bus depots viz, Kothrud Depot, Narveer Tanaji Wadi, Hadapsar, Market Yard, Congress Bhawan, Pune Railway Station, Swargate etc. These bus depots function as starting point and ending point of journey.
Although crowded in peak hours, bus service caters to all areas of Pune and cost of travel is affordable to most of the Punekars. It also offers pass service viz daily pass, weekly pass, students pass, free pass and monthly pass. Pass issue process was automated but the agency implementing was ill prepared to automate the same.
Pollution: Most ageing buses cause pollution. The extent of pollution is debatable compared to cumulative pollution caused by other vehicular traffic. But administration is experimenting on reducing corruption.
Bus Cleaning: Recently few depots were installed with bus cleaning facilities.
Adherences to traffic norms: Pune traffic is chaotic. Recently bus services advised all its drivers to not to cross Zebra Crossing. Rupees 100 were declared as prize if someone shows buses standing on Zebra Crossing. Similar prize was also allowed for showing buses plying without proper boards showing where number and destination. Few drivers are reckless. They never respect bus stops, traffic signals and they just love racing on roads.
Staff: Well, you can’t expect what you get in airlines. By and large staff is courteous. Few conductors are highly educated, few are just doing routine job, few ply autoricks in evening hours to meet the both ends, few are unionist and few are cowboys. Recently there was scam in e-ticketing.
Website: One can check https://pmtpune.org/. Quality of web is equivalent to Govt website. Seems that vendor have escaped with initial payment.
Pune Darshan: This is one of the best facilities offered by administration. At a nominal fee of less than rupees 150 only, your parents can travel and have a glimpse of whole Pune. It starts from Deccan.(One more starting point - possibly Railway Station). You will have to go for advance booking to avoid last minute disappointment. Sundays are packed. Pune administration has deployed trained driver and conductor for this service.
Ambedkar Bhavan, Savarkar Memorial, Jog Bird Park, Pune University, Chaturshingi temple, Kesariwada, Shaniwarwada, LalMahal, Dagdusheth Halvai Ganapati, Phule Wada, Kelkar Museum, Sarasbaug/Peshwepark(Lunch), Parvati, Rajiv Gandhi Animal Zoo, Shinde Chatri, War Memorial, Khan Palace and Deccan are the places covered by Pune Darshan Facility.
BRT: Bus Rapid Transport. It is better I comment less on this, as situation is chaotic. But I am hopeful that situation will improve in days and years to come.
Senior Officials: Recently I happened to meet one of senior official of the rank PIO and traffic controller. He was highly courteous in sharing information and this review will be incomplete without praising this government officer.
My personal comments: I have traveled a lot in PMT buses. I have closely watched behavior of passengers, good-n-bad attitude of staff, studied pass processing, ticketing and administration. I have experienced erratic rush in PMT buses and lost many precious hours in waiting for PMT buses. Still I offer my thanks to Pune Municipal Transport Buses and administration for this services which helped me earn my bread.
There is scope of lot of improvement in terms of pollutions, adherence to traffic norms, punctuality, ticketing, and web business. Public relations activity is just limited to issuing press releases. Quality of website is extremely poor. Complaint handling is no more in sight.
"Rajiv Gandhi is spelled as Rajiv Gandi", there is no monitoring of content on PMPML website. This speaks lack of commitment on part of few responsible officials.
Still this bus service help millions earn their bread and should must be called as Life Line of Pune. ~ Avinash Murkute