Month: December 2022

Mumbai Needs More Fire Stations; Just Look At Andheri

Okay, this might sound odd but one please do read on. It’s been over seven years since I wrote on anything related to Fire and Emergency Services. Interestingly, the only time I wrote on the subject was a poem about a firetruck (linked at the bottom).

Anyhow, getting back on topic, one thing off late I’ve noticed is an increasing number of fires in Mumbai, especially in and around Andheri. I was having a conversation on this matter with the friendly folks at the Andheri Lokhandwala Oshiwara Association (ALOCA) because a fire broke out earlier in the day (18 December) at a building near Lokhandwala Circle.

I just did a Twitter search for the world “fire” from ALOCA’s Twitter account and I counted no fewer than five fires in 2022 that they had reported. Now, the nearest fire station is the Andheri Fire Station that is located on Swami Vivekananda Road (SV Road) near Irla, approximately 1km south of Andheri station. The next fire station is the Goregaon Fire Station that lies behind the Goregaon/Oshiwara bus depots. Andheri East is served by the Marol Fire Station that is located at Marol Naka.

A cursory search revealed that the K-East and K-West wards were the most populated wards as per the 2001 census. Assuming a uniform growth rate, that would mean that the K wards remain among the most populated regions in the city.

Now I was reading up a report on Hindustan Times about a fire that took place in early 2022 at the Chitrakoot grounds on Link Road between DN Nagar and Lokhandwala. A film set caught fire resulting in the death of a 32-year old labourer. Now what is interesting is that a portion of the grounds was reserved to build the Mumbai Fire Brigade’s Ambivali Fire Station as part of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai’s (MCGM) Development Plan for 2034.

The plot in question belongs to the state government and in 2009 the MCGM had issued a commencement certificate to a private developer for construction of the fire station but it had since been cancelled due to a delay (or as we know it better, no action) on the part of the developer. The developer meanwhile has taken the entire plot on lease from the state government.

Due to heavy traffic in the region, which has now gone up since the closure of the Gokhale Bridge (one road closure has ripple effects, remember), it can take anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour for a fire tender to reach the Lokhandwala region which has numerous high-rises, malls, and shopping centres in the locality. The plot was reserved for a fire station over 20 years ago.

The plot meanwhile is used for a variety of commercial purposes from weddings to film shoots to cricket turfs and what not. Rents are lucrative too, and I have been told that cricket alone fetches anywhere upwards of ₹10,000 an hour.

With the polls to the MCGM looming, right now is the time to make noise about this. When political parties announce their respective candidates, please approach them and make sure that they promise it in their manifesto. That is the first step. If the candidate isn’t approachable, then it’s best you vote for someone else. Given that the Mayor of Mumbai has been from the Shiv Sena from 1996, I’d say there is limited scope of getting them to build one. Approach your MLA, especially if they’re part of the government. Andheri West residents, please approach Ameet Satam the local MLA while Versova residents please approach Dr Bharti Lavekar, both of whom are part of the ruling government. The advantage of having staggered elections is that if the person who you voted for in the MCGM isn’t doing good, you can avoid voting for them in the general election to the Parliament or the Legislative Assembly.

If you’re interested in reading the poem I wrote on a Firetruck, you can read it here: The Little Red Firetruck

Featured Image: MAN Firetruck of the Mumbai Fire Brigade at JVPD Circle (Photo: Srikanth Ramakrishnan/BESTpedia)

BEST Gets Better: Premium AC Chalo Bus Service To Start

Adding another feather in its cap, the Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking will soon start premium air-conditioned buses in the city.

These new buses will be single-door electric buses manufactured by Ashok Leyland’s subsidiary Switch Mobility. Branded as Chalo Bus, they will be dark blue in colour with an orange livery. The bus will not feature any standees and commuters will have to book tickets upfront via the Chalo app. Buses will feature USB ports for charging devices, live tracking and will only stop if a reservation from the stop exists. Commuters will have subscription plans available as well as flexibility in scheduling and canceling.

As part of the first phase, four buses will hit the streets on 12 December 2022 with two routes that will run from Monday to Saturday.

Express Route: This route will run from Thane to Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) every 30 mins between 7am and 8.30am and in the reverse direction between 5.30pm and 7pm.

All-Day Route: This route will run from Bandra Station to BKC 8.50am and 5.50pm and in the reverse direction from 9.25pm to 6.25pm.

This makes BEST the first city in India to have a premium bus service that is entirely electric.

BEST has announced plans to launch 200 more such buses.

As of now, it is unknown which depot these buses will be housed at and whether they will be operated by Switch’s mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) subsidiary OHM Global Mobility.

I am personally disappointed by BEST’s decision to not stick to its ubiquitous red colour. The colour scheme is eerily reminiscent of BEST’s Purple Faeries. Another factor that makes me sceptical is the timings of the bus. By not operating on Sundays and restricting operations between 8am and 6pm, BEST is focusing only on one section of the userbase. If BEST is really looking at taking on cabs and auto-rickshaws, it needs to operate for longer periods and also operate on Sundays, predominantly to attract the touristy crowd.

Interestingly, a decade ago, the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) experimented with its now defunct Shivneri Corporate service. It used its existing Shivneri fleet of Volvo B7Rs as a point-to-point service from Kandivali to BKC.

Let’s hope BEST succeeds with the Chalo Bus.

Gurugram too has tried out something similar. Gurugaman Plus: You Can Now Book Seats On Select Gurgaon City Buses With Uber

To understand the problems with BEST’s earlier AC buses, do read this: The curious case of BEST and its AC buses

The Future Of Transport Is Here, And It Isn’t What You Think It Is

This is a rather long article. I’d recommend you please read the entire thing before cursing me. Also, where I have begged you to click a link and read, please do?

Not too long ago, we were fed an idea of this futuristic transport system that was really high-speed in nature and had the potential to disrupt the very way we imagined commuting. The idea was so radical that we were even told that it could go up to 1220 km/hr (760 miles apparently). Imagine that. Imagine doing Mumbai to Chennai in a little over an hour. You could have Kande Pohe for breakfast, take a ride, go have some filter coffee and then get back to work.

This radical idea even had a radically different name – one which made no sense whatsoever – the Hyperloop. Of course, while billions of dollars were spent in various proposals, with the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) even going so far as setting up a Centre of Excellence for Hyperloop Technology (CoEHT) at IITM to develop the Avishkar Hyperloop, it eventually was reported that SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk allegedly came up with the Vactrain-based concept to scuttle the California High-Speed Rail project. While I may not be the best to judge on this matter, the Hyperloop sadly has not evolved into a real thing, at least not yet. Till then, here’s Elon Musk’s napkin sketch of what his interpretation of George Medhurst’s 1799 concept looks like.

Elon Musk's napkin sketch of the Hyperloop — Elon Musk’s napkin sketch of the Hyperloop

A few years later, came another idea, again from Musk. This time, he got stuck in traffic and decided that he would bore his way out. And so he set about creating a very Boring venture. No, really, he started the Boring Company.

It all sounded good, and then it became essentially a system of tunnels for cars. I had written about it too, back then. Read about it here. Two years later amidst criticism, he announced that the system would prioritise public transport and those without cars. I wrote about that too. You can read it here, on Swarajya.

I think the culmination of Elon Musk’s boring idea and my idle mind during the lockdown, combined with the utter antipathy from the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha ~~Vinash~~ Vikash Aghadi government resulted in me writing one of my most blockbuster satire stories ever: In the absence of a depot, Mumbai Metro 3 to run BEST buses in the tunnel. But clearly, it didn’t go anywhere. Here is a picture of the Las Vegas Convention Centre (LVVC) Loop built by TBC.

Musk (again, yes, I know) then came up with a concept from the spaceX Starship called the BFR, aka the Big Falcon Rocket, aka the Big Fucking Rocket (as he said it) which he claimed could be used to do a trip from Delhi to Tokyo in 30 minutes. Not a bad idea, but it will probably take you twice that to get to Delhi Airport or wherever a rocket from Delhi would take off. Of course, this means Chhole Bhature for breakfast and Sushi for lunch. Win-win no? Here is a picture of that too.

SpaceX illustration of the 2018 Big Falcon Rocket at stage separation

Now, after boring you for nearly 500 words about Elon Musk, let me bring you to what I really wanted to talk about.

For those of you who are fans of Rowan Atkinson, you might already have an idea of what I am going to talk about. No, I’m not talking about the alien spaceship from Mr Bean. I’m not talking about The Thin Blue Line, Blackadder or the Glass Elevator from Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. If you’ve seen Johnny English Reborn, you know what I’m talking about.

The future of transportation comes from Volkswagen. Yes, the same company that was founded by acolytes of a certain Adolf Hitler, disabled their vehicles’ emission control systems outside of test environments (fondly known as Dieselgate or Emissionsgate) and recently became the choice of Charmed actress Alyssa Milano who ditched her Tesla for a WV in support of free speech and to reject hatred and what not. I could go on but describing a libbu is tedious work.

Volkswagen Norway’s Commercial Vehicles team designed the as-yet unnamed device, the office chair. You know what they said about it?

The chair is designed to give those who work in an office a feeling of what it’s like to have a car from Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles as your workplace. You can drive, honk and listen to music – even signal as you take a turn into a meeting room.
Volkswagen

Oh yeah! The chair is here.

The chair can do around 20 km/hr and has a detachable battery and can do up to 12km on a full charge. Now that’s a bit of a let down, if you ask me. But this is indeed the future of transportation. And while people like me predicted six years ago that Handicar would be the future (at this point, I urge you to click this link, read and laugh, please), it turns out Eric Cartman sitting on a mobility scooter is closer to reality.

This is quite a breakthrough. Unfortunately, fans of super agent Johnny English may not be able to quite replicate what he did with the wheelchair with the WVchair. See what I did there? No? Me neither.

If you don’t remember what Agent English did, here is a visual reminder of what Agent English did.

However, this is a breakthrough. A major major breakthrough. Why, you ask? It’s simple. Whenever a company does something that is different from what it actually does, the results are interesting. Imagine if Apple manufactured a jetpack (or something similar, as Aapil Sathukudinathan discovered here, please read) or if Microsoft built software to count vehicles at Toll Plazas (oh wait, that was Traf-O-Data) or McDonald’s used the excess fat from their kitchen to power vehicles. This is as significant as Rolls Royce manufacturing honey! No kidding here though, Rolls Royce actually sold honey from bees at their apiary.

So get ready. Get ready to ditch every mode of public and private transport that you have ever used in your life. It’s time for you to embrace the sedentary lifestyle of a software engineer and sit on your chair all day long as you go from one place to another.

If you’re on Twitter, do share this link and tag Elon Musk. Maybe he might invest in my potential transport-based startup. And also ask him to restore my old Twitter account, given his talks on free speech.

Featured Image: City of future composition. Image by macrovector on Freepik.

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