Cars and Traffic

Sunday's are days when you want traffic free roads.  I got on the road on a Sunday (for one of my "weekend chores") to find myself in the midst of thick traffic.   Perhaps, there are many like me who expect empty roads on Sunday.  It seemed like all of us like minded souls were getting on the same roads at the same time.  

When you are stuck in traffic, fiddling on the radio knobs is a natural impulse.  An announcement on a local station caught my attention.  The "Tata Nano" was about to celebrate its launch anniversary.  Wow! Wasn't that a proud moment for us?  India was entering a bastion, dominated by US, European and Japanese car makers.   As I waited for the traffic to clear,  I started reminiscing !  My mind raced back to when my family bought our first car!

Our first car was a second hand 1967 Fiat which we bought in 1973.    In those days, you had predominantly a choice of either Ambassador or Fiat.   For some reason, our car was always referred to as "Italian Fiat".  I never could understand - after all Fiat was an Italian company, so why add Italian as a prefix?   But, it seems that cars before 1972 or so were built with Italian parts and hence the prefix.   The parts of these cars were not readily available in the market.   Being a second hand car, it came with its bag of troubles.   I have many memories of spending Sunday mornings going with my dad to various mechanics to get our car fixed.  There was always a problem.  Yet, we all loved the car and had great fun on many family outings.  Including "out of station" trips to Pune.   The Khandala Ghat was a challenge and on such trips our car more than lived up to its reputation of breakdowns!

Much later we had an Ambassador! It was no match to the Fiat in terms of looks and style.  It wasn't the sleekest of cars.  And after a while you just had to get used to the noise level in an Ambassador.  The engine whrrrr, the door noises and the clunky gears !   But there was a huge plus.  The car ran and ran and ran!  Easy to maintain - it rarely use to breakdown.  And if it did, almost any roadside mechanic could fix it.

With the launch of Maruti, everything changed.  There was choice, variety and competition.  The Tata's launched Indica and soon a number of global auto giants discovered India.  The last two decades has seen a phenomenal growth in this Industry and I think the Nano is one of the high points.

As I was engrossed in my thoughts, I realized that the traffic had indeed moved.  We had in fact moved almost 100 meters in 20 minutes.  There was progress!  As I glanced out of the window, I noticed the neighboring car.  It was a BMW !  As I eyed it with envy, I realized that there are so many cars now being launched in the "luxury" segment.   When will we solve our traffic woes, so that these and other cars will find a place on the road?

Mumbai has traditionally held its place amongst Indian cities to be one of the best in public transport.   People of Mumbai relied on suburban trains and BEST buses to commute.   Most development in fact took place near or around the suburban tracks.  It extended till Virar on the West and Karjat/Kasara on the Central line.    A lot of that has changed in the past 20 years.   New cars were launched and suburbs also grew "wider" with rickshaws crawling all over.  Every political party measured its success based on number of "flyovers" that got inaugurated during its tenure. Indeed, we had some remarkable progress.  Till 2000, we had less than 10 flyovers.  I believe we are now approaching 50 and several more are planned or being constructed.  During this period though, we lost our edge on Public Transport.  No matter how many flyovers get built, only superior public transport can solve our problems. 

There is hope, with the Metro, Monorail and many other public transport projects launched.   Hopefully, these will get completed fast enough and Mumbai will regain its superior public transport.

Honk ! Honk !  The traffic had started moving and the BMW wallah had zipped far ahead.  Well, I better get going before it jams again !