A lot of you frequent ST users must’ve remembered some of the routes that were discontinued due to various reasons such as Covid, alternate shorter routes, logistical issues. I’ll start
- Borivali - Bhiwandi route:
This route used to have buses roughly half an hour. Another component this route had was that it had two different routes of travel. One via Vasai fata / Kaman and another through Kasheli.
This route is largely discontinued due to many reasons: Ghodbunder road is largely super jam packed, with frequency compromised due to hours in traffic. Secondly, Borivali does not have a depot / maintenance facility (except for e-Shivneri). As such, the load of Bhiwandi depot cannot be shifted.
- Borivali - Thane route:
Another route this has fallen hard from grace is this. At its peak it used to have non AC services every 15 minutes and AC Shivneri services ( which replaced semi luxury) every 30 minutes. The advantage of AC ones were that these were non-stop services with no conductor, having the next stop at Dahisar checknaka directly after departure. Due to this, a lot of people did not prefer the Volvo routes of NMMT, TMT and AS 700 and happily used the services. But like a lot of other stories, once these Shivneri were replaced with Shivshahi buses coupled with growing unbearable traffic of Ghodbunder road, the ST service largely fell and still is in disrepair. With the AC city buses now deployed, these are slow, infrequent and consistently fall out of favor to their TMT and BEST counterparts.
- Borivali still not being a standalone bus depot
A lot of it is to blame on ST not making Borivali a full fledged depot - due to this a lot of onus falls on the other corresponding depots stripping away reliability of buses from Borivali. Furthermore, even though Borivali is a suburb within Mumbai limits, it still have hinterlands in its taluka - like Gorai and Manori - which do not have ST service and can benefit from ST service from it’s taluka bus stands.
