There were more complaints of ticketless passengers in conductor-less buses as tickets are only given at the originating point for them. For the first time in October 2019, conductor-less buses were started on a few select routes and later expanded to more routes. In November 2021, mid-day had highlighted in an article how a commuter had gone visiting bus depots in south Mumbai to pay for his ticket as the bus did not have a conductor, and how this was leading to losses to the BEST.

On the conductor-less buses, passengers have to buy tickets at the originating stops as these are non-stop buses, an official said, adding that the service was started initially for effective manpower utilisation and on routes which do not have mid-way stops. As per latest official data, every day about 809 conductor-less buses ply on 110 different bus routes in the city and suburbs making about 14,262 trips.

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BEST officials said that the Chalo app is useful for these buses now and its usage has increased every day as there are thousands of new downloads and they were confident that the number of ticketless travellers would come down in 2022 with it.

11,469
No. of ticketless travellers on BEST buses in 2020

23,972
No. of ticketless travellers on the buses in 2021 (till November)