Paying Full Toll Tax for half the Services!

I travel on Delhi Gurgaon expressway everyday. And damned pay the toll too and feel frustrated thereafter when using it. Was it not meant for saving time? Was it not made for providing safety of passengers as well as vehicles? Or above all else, was it not made for better overall experience?

But look at what we have got.

Time Loss in transition: Getting on and off the highway takes more time than the actual drive. While average time on highway is just ~15 minutes, time taken in jams at joints is almost 25 minutes. Shouldn’t this have been thought of during 5 years of planning and construction of the toll-road? Even today, RTR is being widened and a flyover is being erected while Dhaula Kuan and Gurgaon joints are not being smoothened at all.

Mixed Traffic: The highway was supposed to be free of 2-wheeler traffic or it was being propagated that they will be kept to the left extreme and off-the flyovers. However, nothing is being done to ensure this. You really can’t blame the 2-wheelers for mixing with main traffic as it is natural for anyone to do in absence of proper management. Nowhere on the highway is there a sign stating the same. I think plush and expensive roads like this and DND (Delhi-Noida toll road) can be easily used as pilot for educating people on lane driving instead of making them falling prey to same chaos as streets of an unruly city.

Toll Management: The toll management continues to be miserable whereby people willing to pay in bulk don’t have a choice to pay for more than one month in advance, there aren’t any distribution points in Delhi or Gurgaon where maximum number of commuters lives, or there is no online mode to pay for a single monthly recharge.

Pedestrian movement: Nobody needed to point out that the DGE passes through some very heavy pedestrian/cyclists population such as Mahipalpur, Shankar Chowk, IFFCO chowk yet adequate measures were not taken to ensure smooth movement. Why should a pedestrian/cyclist go around kms before reaching a point from where he can cross the road? Are our authorities really so dumb that they could not foresee problems as obvious as this?

Speed-limit: There is not a single sign-board telling spped-limit on the highway yet we often see traffic interceptors challaning vehicles. Can DSC/NHAI come-out with clarity on the same?

Regulatory Action: When full bouquet of services that were part of the project is not being offered, then why are commuters being charged in full? Shouldn’t there be a mechanism of ensuring that full value is being delivered to customer or else they should not be charged in full till the same is not being done.

Recent update: I read just before completing this post here that DSC will charge Rs 400/- to non-tag users entering tag lanes. Welcome move but will they ensure by trying themselves first that people know for sure that the lane they are entering is a tag-lane or non-tag one given that the curve when one comes from Delhi makes it difficult to figure out where the lane is actually heading. Off-late, they’ve also made a single entry for almost 4 lanes thereby causing vehicles to jostle and scratch each other to enter the lane first especially the rash behaving cabbies.

Urban Garbage Disposal systems are making lives miserable! Answer is DIY.

NCR of any country is supposed to be a model of the country itself. Any nation's USP, strengths as well as weaknesses can be seen by looking closely at its capitals. So if Delhi has good roads, good focus on high-end education for the rich it can be assumed that it is so in other parts as well. Similarly on other hand, if it has poor education infra for poor, bad quality of roads and bad sanitation systems then it can be safely assumed that the entire nation faces the same. Here, I'd want to highlight and work towards improving a lot of shortcomings that exist in our system as I have been doing in my posts below but am restricting this post to urban sanitation.
Until a decade ago, most of the Indian cities were clean with Municipal corporations discharging their duties properly. However, situation has worsened now. Lets see what went wrong. Since 90s or rather post India opening up in 91, it witnessed a speedier pace of industrialisation. License Raj was gone and everyone was free to start his own business. Multiple brands for same products right from Gutkhas to Mineral water, chips to baked products and electronics to automobiles emerged alongwith redistribution of incomme with more people getting more spending power and India's Middle Income Group (MIG) suddenly catching attention of manufacturers' attention across the globe. The Americans, Koreans, Japanese and many others set-up shop here to hire the MIGs and sell their products to them (as well as export). This Indian MIG which has been reading and listening about living standards and lifestyles of the west suddenly started finding bits and pieces of those in their lives and grabbed every new gizmo or chips being thrown at it. Suddenly they started moving out much more, buying much more and THEN wasting and littering much more, a concept that was just not there before 90s. This paradigm shift continues to be talked about in all Business Houses' marketing conferences. However, what is not being talked about is the mess they've created in the making of this new India. Darwin ruled - those who could encash this opportunity, jumped upon it the fastest. So, the MNCs as well as the domestic firms made and sold products while leaving the scavenging to the govt and its municipals.
Apparently, it was up to the govt to direct its municipals to figure out ways to cope-up with the clean-up. This clearly has not happened. We still talk about regular repairs and expansion of necessary infrastructure (roads, sewerage pipelines, electricity) but nothing has happened to monitor the progress of existing as well as new measures. Take the case of garbage dumping. Moving around Delhi, Gurgaon or any other region, we can find big garbage dumps with all sort of garbage lying in the midst of the colonies. The garbage system is active, there are people with jobs for cleaning up the same but there seems to be no guidelines on how to do the job. There is no penalty for not keeping the gathering points clean and hygienic.
The problem lies with the lethargy of the government. It is simply not accepting that something has changed over the years at a pace much faster than it imagined and as a consequence it doesn't see the need to act fast and do justice to their jobs. So, the job gets transferred onto us, the citizens who if alone doesn't count but when together can get its voice heard everywhere. We need to adopt the DIY model i.e. Do It Yourself. It doesn't mean exactly that we start picking up the garbage and cleaning the stuff but what it does mean is that we need to get our act together and start talking to people responsible for the mess around us. This is what people in Gurgaon recently did and did more than once when Municipal Corp of Gurgaon (MCG) simply started dumping truckloads of garbage right under their nose, to expose them to a blissful stench alongwith direction of wind (we still thank windgods for not blowing in same direction all the time) and exposing them to dangers of epidemic looming large over their heads. And talk about it being the millennium city with choicest of professionals choosing it as their homes. Residents including CEOs of MNCs, mother of Yuvraj Singh, our star cricketer himself and many others demonstrated on roads and tried to stop the dumping. Their voice was heard and they were assured of quicker action on resolving this problem. How quick it would be resolved still remains a question but the people certainly have not sit quiet and are following their demands by going to state capital Chandigarh to visit the courts and trying to get a reprieve from the problem at the earliest.
Moral of the story is that India needs awakening and this can be done by none other than Indians themselves, the real Indians who face the brunt of inaction of their elected representatives as well as inefficient and slow govt departments. They have got tools in their hands like RTI, RWAs, Media through which can they ask questions and get answers and as a result improve their lives themselves. The mantra is DIY.
Do share your views on the same and suggest your viewpoints on the same.

What's more polluting? Euro III Diesel Cars or Paralysed Traffic?

Off late, there's been a lot of hue and cry over increasing number of diesel cars including SUVs on the road owing to subsidised diesel rates, thereby increasing pollution on the road. I feel it is camouflaging the real cause of vehicular pollution, as there shall always be a category of vehicles causing maximum pollution. It maybe a diesel car today (though I am not sure if a new Euro III or Euro IV compliant diesel cars is more polluting than a 5 year old petrol car) or a petrol bike yesterday, but solution is not to phase out a class of vehicles out but look at root of the problem and finding means to nix them.
I think biggest cause of pollution today is delaying trips of vehicles on the road. Every vehicle today has to spend lot more time on the road than it should -owing to short and frequent and even big traffic jams owinng to improper traffic management at work sites, potholed roads awaiting proper repair. Besides, a lot of these vehicles just don't want to be there but has to be because of lack of proper public transport. Government should therefore ensure ways to reduce travel time as well as number of vehicles by aggressively focusing on several factors simultaneously such as:
1. Increasing focus on traffic management at peak hours -which unfortunately is not happening now. Traffic police should seriously consider outsourcing a portion of traffic management in electronic format like using GPS services and ensuring proper manpower at places where there is more congestion.
2. Increasing MRT services: Delhi boasts of a gargantuan fleet of Bluelines yet leaves a lot to be desired. Most of the fleet is ill-managed with little comfort for passengers and add to that mass killing by them everyday thus making it a necessary evil. Government should ensure disciplining the same by ensuring they stick to desired fitness levels, speed limits and bus lanes, imposing grave penalties for breaching these standards for both service providers as well as regulatory bodies i.e. Delhi Traffic Police and continuously invite more competition which shall result in better services.
3. Stricter policies on execution of new projects: Delhi has a long list of infrastructure projects in pipeline for which every government tries to take credit during its regime by large prinnt ads, but none of them has zeroed in on ensuring speedier execution of the same which shall facilitate faster transport and lower pollution levels for the city.
I am sure joint action from government, execution bodies and enforcement agencies will not only speed up projects but also ensure better lifestyles, lower pollution levels and even less time spent on frills like ban on certain class of vehicles, just for sake of pretending to be ON THE JOB.

Cutting Noise Around Us

Finally, I figured out that pollution is dangerous for us before it could be discovered by anyone else. It has also led me to believe that we MUST try and reduce it to a believably acceptable level as it is impossible to zero it.
Thanks for the applause.
Well, what this blog will do is make an effort to do things which are maybe too subtle to be noticed or taken action upon by people but leads to discomfort in our lives and even endangering its quantum.
I'd like to discuss Noise Pollution first. Major sources that affect us everyday are traffic horns, traffic noises, religious events in communities, air traffic and of course people talking on cellphones in confined public places.
People in Mumbai have led from the front by taking in confidence traffic authorities and celebrating a No-Horn Day in April (see coverage on Karmayog and Businessworld)
I'd like to see the great act being replicated across the country and maybe with a certain frequency (like First Monday of each month-Monday being the most maniacal of all days, if one can stay calm on Monday then he's sure to have a nice week ahead).
What one may have also noticed is the shrill of the horns which is so different from the melody of the Ambys and Fiats during the 70s and 80s and even 800's soft horn in its salad days. I strongly recommend that we should return to them as those horns were equally audible to people driving in front of any car as are today's -only a bit less annoying. Today, if you were to (and you have been at lot of times) pass through a road in a busy street, horn of a single car makes you feel like stopping the driver and give him piece of your mind.
Action here is needed from automobile manufacturers. They must realise that high decibels noise is not a great spec to have on their fliers. Action is also needed from Transport authorities in bringing down allowed noise for these honkers. Current limits are described here. But these are far more than those permissible in developed countries and this is an area where we can certainly beat developed nations with the least effort.
I'd speak about other noise pollution items in my subsequent posts.

In search of alternate fuel

This is my maiden effort to figure out a viable business model in alternate fuels. The blog shall be a congregation of research publications from across the world and views from experts in the field.