BHUBANESWAR: Mo Bus, the city bus service in the Capital region, has continued its journey, unfazed by the pandemic and other challenges. The bus service completes its second year on Friday and Capital Region Urban Transport (CRUT) will now seek experience of passengers to be shared in a book format.
Once the books are published, they will be distributed to the passengers of Mo Bus. "We have always given priority on operations so that passengers are satisfied with our service," said CRUT MD Arun Bothra. Mo Bus has witnessed a rise in ridership every passing day ever since its launch on November 6, 2018.
When the service started, the daily ridership of Mo Bus was over 19,000 on an average but the operations took a hit after cyclone Fani devastated the Capital region. However, CRUT continued to provide people-friendly services and managed to increase the ridership of Mo Bus.
In January, everyday over 1 lakh people travelled in MoBus and 1.31 lakh commuted in the month of February. On International Women’s Day, CRUT provided free service to lady passengers for a day and the gesture was applauded by thousands.
Over 40,000 women passengers commuted in MoBus on the occasion. Bothra said, CRUT also focuses on maintaining two-way communication with the passengers and efforts are always to immediately revert if a passenger has any query.
During the lockdown, CRUT continued its communication with its passengers through interesting games and puzzles which were posted on its Twitter handle with hashtag #GamesofMoBus. Though the operations were shut for general public, Mo Bus helped ferrying State Government’s Covid helpline call centre’s staff.
CRUT even organised five-week long online sessions dubbed as ‘'Bus Pathsala' in July for its 1,000 employees on soft skills and technical skills.
After the lockdown was lifted, it started sanitising Mo Buses to ensure safety of the passengers. Currently out of 200 buses, 109 buses are operating on 17 routes including Cuttack, Bhubaneswar, Khurda, Puri, Pipili and Konark.