Pune to Mumbai road transport took a major hit on Wednesday as commuters avoided travelling to Mumbai due to the heavy unseasonal rains and the panic of cyclonic activity.

Apart from the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC), the taxi service between the two cities also witnessed minimal business. However, the rail services ran as usual.

“Ever since the rains began on Tuesday, our business got affected. We had to cancel our services on various routes, especially Mumbai, due to non-availability of passengers. We cancelled a few buses to Mumbai as there were very few passengers,” Shivaji Sonawane, divisional controller of MSRTC said.

On an usual day, 34 Volvo buses leave MSRTC’s Pune station bus stand for Mumbai. “Today, we ran 17 buses till afternoon even though the number of passengers was very low. But by evening the number fell drastically, forcing us to cancel a few buses,” K B Gormalkar, in-charge of bus operations told The Indian Express.

He said, “While on regular days, we run the buses almost every 15 minutes, on Wednesday, the frequency was reduced to hours as we had no passengers.”

The taxi services between Pune and Mumbai also witnessed less activity than usual.

Rohidas, an employee of the Mumbai-Pune-Mumbai Taxi Association said, “Though the taxis had no problem plying on the road, there was a low turnout of passengers. So we had to keep our vehicles off the roads.”

Keeping the business as usual was the rail services. Spokesperson of Pune division of Central Railway Y K Singh said that the rain service was hardly affected on the Pune-Mumbai route.

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