Reading between the lanes…

Found this awesome advertising campaign on TheCityFix. Ads (including the below pictures) originally posted here.

With traffic jams becoming a harsh reality (nightmare?) of urban life, it would be interesting to explore what services could be offered to (at the very least) minimize the poor user experience for the commuters who’re stuck in never-ending traffic jams?

I’ve personally experienced that listening to the Radio/Music or catching up with friends/colleagues on the phone (while you’re stuck in a jam) are couple of ways of minimizing the stress. What keeps you going?

Moving to sustainable urban transport (and why we’ve moved our office hours)

Sustainable urban transport and urban mobility initiatives have always interested me. Thanks to a good friend who works at EMBARQ, and people like Ashwin Mahesh (who’s got a wealth of knowledge & experience in this domain), I’ve had the opportunity to learn more about it over the last year or so. But, an interesting conversation with a friend led to an idea that I feel holds a lot of possibilities in the context of urban mobility.

A good friend took up a job recently at Idea Product Design (interesting company, by the way, do check them out) in Ahmedabad and happened to mention that the work hours are from 6.30am to 3pm or so! Obviously, my first reaction was absolute shock!

Thankfully, better sense prevailed. And before I knew it, I was actually sold on the idea. To the extent that we’ve now changed our office hours (on a “trial” period to start with). We now start our day at 7am and are done by 4pm! Getting done early in the day and still having several hours left in the day, was one of the key motivators for all of us to try this out. But it’s also the urban mobility angle that’s been of interest for me personally.

Though I’ve heard about similar initiatives by some corporates in Bangalore to beat traffic, for some reason, I wasn’t sold on the idea earlier. But I can now see HUGE value from being able to work during these early hours…not just to beat traffic, but being able to do so much more in a day, outside of work. I can’t wait to make this a habit, and to have some of the large corporates in the city to change timings as well. Imagine the number of the dreaded Qualis-cabs, corporate buses and private cars/bikes that would go off-the-road during the regular hours.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this one (especially those in Bangalore).

While on the topic, here’s couple of interesting reads:

• Car Free Day in Bandra (Mumbai city). Love the idea and the way they’ve “marketed” the concept using well-designed posters and social networking sites like Facebook. Nice.
  I’m now thinking of a similar initiative to have companies shift their work hours!
• The City Fix: Exploring Sustainable Solutions to The Problems of Urban Mobility
  An interesting blog by EMBARQ.

Drive away parking blues!

Gave my car to the valet at a store on Commercial Street (once upon a time, THE shopping destination in Bangalore). For those who’re familiar with Commercial Street will know how impossible it is to get parking.

So, the valet ends up parking it almost a kilometre away! And when you’re done, instead of getting your car to the store, the valet drives you to your car in their car! Nice, eh?

Who needs speed?

The recently launched Chevrolet Spark has a “unique” feature, a speedometer right in the middle of the car dashboard, not behind the steering wheel, as is usually seen in cars. Also noticed this on the Mini Cooper’s dashboard (thanks to Rob Tannen’s post on RedesignMe!).

This is the Chevrolet Spark’s interior (image courtesy, Chevrolet Spark website):

And, this is the Mini Cooper’s dashboard (image courtesy, Mini website):

I find this approach “different”, but am left a bit confused about who’s actually the primary user of the speedometer? Traditionally, one would assume it’s the car driver. But, going by the approach taken by the Mini and the Spark, would the speedometer have any use for the passengers in the car? Wouldn’t it just make ‘nervous-type’ passengers feel even more nervous (think Indian roads & traffic), knowing that the current speed is a crazy 83kmph on a narrow stretch of road with 60 other cars, 3 cows, 50 auto-rickshaws and a dozen cyclists?

I wonder if any specific ‘user need’ prompted them to do this…or, is it just another “let’s be different” approach?!

Low-cost cars…dream or nightmare?

Vijay Sambav writes an open letter to Ratan Tata about Ratan Tata’s “dream project” Rs. 1-lakh car (approximately $2500). I found some of the comments posted by readers at the bottom of the page especially interesting…healthy (and even amusing) debate on the pros & cons of this project.

Quite timely, considering I’ve been mulling over this myself. It’s not the first time somebody’s brought up the potential issues with creating an automobile explosion in a country that is still catching up on basic infrastructural needs. This older story on Rediff looked at this project in the context of the boom in the US several decades ago…

The impact of a robust car industry cemented the US economy but it also led to a car mania that is yet to lose its grip over the world’s richest nation.

As of 2002, there were 590 million passenger cars worldwide. This means that there was roughly one car for every eleven people worldwide. The US statistics were, however, quite different. In 2002, it had 140 million cars: meaning there was one car for every two people in United States! Cheap car loans, affordable cars due to the economies of scale and a very large manufacturing base made Americans own cars as if their lives depended on it.

It is the American passion for cars that has seen the US become one of the biggest guzzlers of gasoline. Americans consume up 9,495,000 barrel of light distillates (mostly gasoline) every day. This constitutes 45 per cent of America’s consumption of all categories of fuel.

I can also see several similarities in the way the aviation industry has taken off (no pun intended) in the last few years in India. Since Air Deccan kicked off the ‘low-cost, no frills’ concept in India few years ago, the aviation industry hasn’t been the same.

But the impact is significant…airports in most major cities in India weren’t prepared to deal with the upsurge in air travel in the country. Infrastructure in most of these airports is only now getting upgraded.

The irony, given all the heated discussions about an ecological impact of this project, is when you visit the Tata Motors website. Corporate social responsibility seems to be big on their agenda…

“It (Tata Motors) is a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact, and is engaged in community and social initiatives on labour and environment standards in compliance with the principles of the Global Compact.”

“Tata Motors has planted as many as 80,000 trees in the works and the township and more than 2.4 million trees have been planted in Jamshedpur region. Over half a million trees have been planted in the Poona region. Tata Motors has directed all its suppliers to package their products in alternate material instead of wood.”

Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be much (or any?) mention about investing or partnering with the government in improving the road infrastructure in the country.

On a different note…If my last name was anywhere close to “Tata”, one of my “dream projects” would probably be to have 1 billion people ride around on bicycles!

More innovation with traffic

Continuing from my previous story about RouteGuru, wanted to also share couple of other increasingly popular traffic related innovations happening in India (incidentally, both originating from Bangalore)…

Mapunity has put together this application for the Bangalore Traffic Police. It shows live traffic information for the entire city, using the cell phone networks across the city. Depending on the presence of cellphones (and therefore, people), the map shows you how crowded/dense that area is currently.

Of course, it’s not meant to be exact or precise in terms of the number of people/vehicles on the street…but it does the job…you get a sense of how smooth the traffic flow is or isn’t currently.

And the second one, which has been around for some time now and far more publicised and popular, Commute Easy, for car & bike-pooling. The techies in Bangalore seem to be loving it!

With the phenomenal boom in cell phones in the country, and with almost every one in the urban cities carrying (at least) one cell phone, no wonder both these concepts are relying and using mobile phones to make things easy for users. Way to go!