to commute: to travel regularly over some distance

How much is "some" in that distance in this title? Transportation itself is a large industry with lot of people, power and money involved. Whenever these three are involved along comes trouble. My visits to Mumbai during my childhood was always exciting. It was not just because I was with my dear and near ones there but it helped me to visualize what city life would be that is the future for every semi-urban places in India that time. The most fascinating thing I saw in those times were of course Mumbai traffic and Metro Rail. In recent past as old as 3 years back, I was forced to reschedule my flight to Delhi since I got stuck in Mumbai traffic for 1.5hrs while returning from a business meeting to my Hotel. I just had to pick my luggage and rush to airport. But in that pace it would have taken me 4-5hrs to reach airport. Similar incident had happened to me just after two days in Chennai when I trusted Chennai to be better than Mumbai in traffic. Often think how life is at such a high pace in such cities where people don't have time to run fast since most of their life is spend in travel or stuck in traffic.


Right now we don't have a complete solution to reduce these traffic jams. People like me could just preach to use public transport more but can that happen in big metros of the world? When will people realize that these hours they spend stuck in traffic just eats up 10% of their life for no cause, good or bad. We should try to address the root thought of why we prefer to have our own cars or motorcycles or bikes or whatever vehicles. One of that I could think of is mobility. It gives us mobility and freedom to get to wherever we want and whenever we want. Having a closer look at these two key points makes us think. Do we really have that freedom? Remember we have a higher chance to get stuck in traffic. That kills of the 'whenever' we want part of it. Now 'wherever' we want, is that because our public transports can't get us there?
Maybe true at times it happens. No train can come to your house!

But consider we use public transport for our daily needs. Knowingly or unknowingly what all problems we tackle with that?
1. We tend to plan our schedules more better since we know what time our bus or train leaves our place.
2. We protect our environment by less carbon emissions and provide a better world for our next generations.
3. We might end up walking some distance that most of us don't want to, which in turn helps your heart and helps you keep fit.
4. You can cut short on your gym spendings to keep fit. Accidents could be reduced but should not overlook the fact that when one happens it could be devastating too with public transport.
5. Can forget about your vehicle insurance payments and much more.

I would leave it to you guys to find out the pros of it, since cons would always be on back of every body's mind when it comes to question our habits. Do remember that the number of private vehicles is growing exponentially which is evident from the total sales(YOY) of Maruti Suzuki & Hero Honda in India.

Coming back to the second thing that always fascinated me in Mumbai and later made me think for sometime was the Metro Rail & the best part of it was the frequency of operations. The only turn off to that was the rush to board and the rush inside these trains which at times hit my lungs since I was too short for the tall crowd. But again if we really think of making people use public transport to overcome few issues create more issues? More rush? More suffocations for other short guys in there? Yes, would be the answer that we would have for now.

We should start thinking of a solution which would be worked upon and vigilantly scrutinized. First thing that I saw most places lacked is the discipline of people boarding which would be a difficult problem to tackle at this stage with current infrastructure.

Can we think of having double decker trains with high rise Railway stations which would have boarding on each decks at same time? For each train there would be 4 platforms. Two platforms for boarding and two for alighting. Proper man power should be recruited to make sure that people alighting through the boarding side of the train is promptly fined for their action. When a train stops in a station, people should be boarding from both the decks at same time from one side of the train and people alighting in both decks from other side of the train. Both stations and trains should be well lit with proper surveillance cameras in place. Current solutions our country is looking to just give these existing trains a world class look with replacing them with state of art stylish trains. But is that what we really require considering the population and growth of our country needs to be revisited. Technical challenges for the proposed solution would be how a double decker train would balance on the current tracks. This would also need new kind of tracks to be built with new architecture which needs to be thoroughly designed and engineered to perfection.

We could also think of special compartments for old people similar to existing ladies compartments in these new trains. This would help old people to board and alight at their own pace without getting hurt by the rush of adrenaline in some youthful body.