If you were driving on Bangalore roads last week, you would have noticed that your drive was much smoother than usual, you had to honk a lot less than usual, you reached office much fresher than usual. This was because much less no of vehicles on the road due to festival holidays and the phenomena was more prominent on Wednesday and Thursday. Wednesday and Thursday were off for most of the IT companies in the city, so either everyone was out of the city on a vacation or relaxing at home like me.
This observation sparked two crazy ideas in my mind to solve Bangalore’s traffic woes (to an extent of course). So here it goes –
Crazy Idea #1
Divide the companies in the city in 3 different zones – Zone A, Zone B and Zone C. Companies belonging to Zone A would give the compulsory 2 days off a week on Saturday – Sunday. Companies in Zone B would keep Monday – Tuesday as 2 days off a week. And Wednesday – Thursday for Zone C. So now what will happen is – all company cabs, buses, private vehicles of employees are off the road on different days of the week. Theoretically traffic should reduce by about 30% on all these days but even if it gets reduced by about 15-20%, it is worth it. There are other advantages also of this concept –
- Same reduction in traffic will also be seen at Malls, public places, etc.
- Buses/Trains plying to other cities won’t be running over capacity on Saturday-Sunday and under capacity on other days. Passengers will get spread across the week.
- Same effect would be observed for Hotels etc at popular tourist places. Even long weekends will also be different dates for different people.
- Imagine a husband-wife couple working in companies falling in different zones. Obviously such a setup won’t work out for them, so they will switch to companies in same zone and would stick to those companies for their own convenience. Over time, such people will get settled in companies and attrition rate would come down (I know this sounds crazy :)).
Crazy Idea #2
Well, this is not exactly a crazy idea and is quite possible to implement. This idea actually works on a similar concept to Idea #1 but follows a slightly different approach. All companies in the city should compulsorily have 2 days a week as “Work from home” days. This idea can probably be implemented at logical teams level. For example, people working for a project A (not necessarily in same teams) would work from home 2 days a week (Monday and Thursday) and people working on project B can take Tuesday and Friday as work from home days for example. This concept doesn’t have same advantages as that of Idea #1 but slightly different –
- This idea will bring down traffic levels in city as well as noise level and pollution level
- This idea will bring down fuel costs for individuals
- It will bring down costs like electricity, grocery supplies, for companies
Now don’t get mad at me for thinking wild, as I said before – these ideas are crazy. What do you say?
Just came across this blog.. Both ideas are crazy in my opinion (Yeah, I know that’s what the title says too :)).
A very simple and practical solution would be for the people to start using bicycles to commute within the city. My guess is ~80% of the people have a commute distance of <10 kms. That is an easily bicycleable distance by any normal human being and would take 30 mins irrespective of traffic conditions. (One of the comments here said that the person takes 2 hrs for a 10 km commute- I bet he is in his car. If he were to use a bicycle, his commute time would never exceed 40 mins)
Just imagine, even if half of those people start using bicycles, that will reduce the number of pollution causing vehicles by 40%. Bangalore should look to cities like Amsterdam for inspiration on how to reduce its traffic woes. They too had exactly similar problems years back and its the citizens who were the center of the change (of course helped by the city authorities)..
Can’t agree more with you on this one.
how about helecopter taxis? or even flying cars. We should seriously think of it. It takes me 2 hrs on many days to drive 10 k.
these seem like really cool… but difficult in case of 1st idea thnkng abt the family members wrkng in different co. is not a good one. and if we talk about the second idea then this really sounds good but only if the companies find it comfortable, I feel that ofcourse the IAS of the city can hold a meet over it with the authorities of all the companies in city and the problem can really be solved if they agree.
First idea is a little difficult to implement. People do like to have holidays when everyone is having them so that they can get together at the same time without anyone having to force a sick leave. But on the other side, second idea is something that all companies should follow. It will not only save the company infrastructure costs incrementally, it will also help mothers to continue to remain in work for longer period while taking care of their responsibilities at home.
Absolutely agree with you. But the speed at which traffic (among other things) in Bangalore is getting worse, some tough measures need to be taken. That’s why the idea is crazy :).