Infinite thoughts

On way to his Robotics class, Mrunmay and I were waiting on a signal to turn green. And as usual, there were several vehicles breaking the signal and rushing ahead. This 12 yo had this question, again - "Baba, why are these people breaking the signal?" Most of the time, I have answered - "I don't know. They shouldn't". But today was different. I answered - "Maybe their parents didn't teach them to follow the civic rules.." I have been raised by parents who inculcated the habit of following the civic rules along with making me understand the "why" part of it. Even today, I don't jump the signals, I don't park in the no-parking zone, I do not enter from the wrong side. From day 1 of my car driving, I have been wearing the seat belt and from day 1 of my two-wheeler driving, I have been wearing a helmet. This was long before both these rules came into existence.  And Mrunmay has seen me doing it all along. Even he doesn...

After a long time, Meghana and I decided to go to Barbeque Nation @ Deccan on Saturday afternoon. And unfortunately it turned out to be a not-so-great experience.  We felt really lucky when we were given a table in just 5 minutes as against the usual unavailability at Barbeque Nation , both at DG and at Sayaji. The seating was on the outside covered area, but at least they had those overhead sprinklers for cooling the air. The kebabs included 1 Mushroom, 1 Soya, 1 Pineapple, 1 Paneer along with a Tikki and some preparation of half-baked potatos. The peel of the potato wasn't cooked enough and was spoiling the entire taste. Salt was overriding the taste of pineapple kebab. Paneer had gone hard. After having eaten the Paneer dishes at multiple places, it was obvious that the Paneer that was being served wasn't good and we had to tell it to the staff there. The staff asked their chef to talk to us. We told the experience to the chef and he said he'll get us better prepa...

With so many vehicles on the road, parking is ought to become a problem for city like Pune. It is no surprise that the old part of the city has huge problem of parking space, but it is surprising to see that even the newer localities are being developed without much consideration towards the parking requirements in coming years. Nevertheless, here are some points which would be applicable to almost all the areas: Need explicit marking where the parking starts and where it ends. Board like "No parking 15 mtrs on both sides" makes no sense to me as it is very difficult to know where 15 mtrs start and where it ends. Better way could be marking the no parking area using two boards indicating start and end of the parking/no-parking slot.  Wherever there's dedicated parking for four wheelers, marking the space for individual vehicles. It is not so uncommon to see haphazard parking, which ends up wasting the valuable space in between the two parking spaces, adding to the p...

Pedestrians form a huge chunk of Pune's traffic. You'll see all kind of people walking the street - students, college crowd, working men-women, senior citizens. It's time to support them with right infrastructure. Pedestrian Crossing (Zebra Crossing) At many signal junctions these are present, and at others they are missing. Wherever they are present, most of the times the vehicles stop on the crossing and hence leaves no place for the pedestrians to use the space. It is rare to see a policeman at the junction enforcing this, although there's a recent drive to put up the signboards across major junctions to keep the Pedestrian crossing unoccupied. A frequency of the pedestrian crossing needs to be defined on long stretches where there are no signals. If there are no accessible zebra crossings, pedestrians tend to cross the road wherever they feel like, causing much of a problem for the ongoing traffic.  I believe crossing the road needs to be simplifi...

While driving through the city, I keep on thinking about the changes those could help improve the traffic in various localities. Some are generic thoughts, while remaining are very peculiar to a specific location - road, junction or a combination thereof. By no means this is an expert opinion, but simply is a wishlist of a person who follow the traffic rules and would like to see various things facilitating the law-abiding citizens!! Today's listing is about traffic control signals. The signals at the junctions seem to be having varying patterns and there's little consistency.  There are places where there are specific signs for allowing U turn, at places there are no such signs. It gets confusing when right turn is not allowed. Does "No right turn" means "No U Turn" as well? Many signals do not have the countdown timers. It becomes impossible for a driver to know if the signal is about to change or not. Moreover, it would help the conscious citizens...

Some recent experiences. Except for one, rest are pretty good. Domino's Pizza : Few days back, I came to know that Domino's has started with online ordering system. With my recent adventures of online shopping, there was nothing to stop me and I ended up in ordering online. The experience was pretty smooth and hassle free. Given that it was first time, Meghana confirmed the order by calling up the concerned outlet. Incidentally, we checked the watch exactly at 30th minute and realized that the pizza hadn't reached us yet. And then it was hard to stop Meghana to call up the outlet to check what's happening with our pizza. To our surprise, when she mentioned that it is already past 30 mins, the outlet manager was kind/professional enough to agree to keep the "Domino's promise" and promptly asked us to call him back when the delivery boy reaches. The Delivery boy also gracefully returned some 300 bucks, no questions asked. The wonderful thing happened af...

After Pune Traffic Police, it is now PMPML (Pune Mahanagar Pariwahan Mahamandal Limited) who has started using the social media to promote their drives and improve their services through crowd sourcing. Pune Traffic police conducted some nice initiatives by inviting the citizens to post the photographs of offending vehicles (parking in no-parking area/non-standardized number plates/encroachment by private offices/restaurants on public parking space etc). The police ensured that the complaints registered so are addressed, the update is posted on the Facebook along with the action taken and the concerned police station/police officer's name/contact no. Although this is just a start, if continued persistently, this will go a long way to help improve the traffic chaos in the Pune city. Now that PMPML has also launched its own facebook page , we'd see some similar action on this front from PMPML. I have my own reservations about PMPML and hence about this initiative too. As part of...

I had been hearing about this " city " for quite sometime - all good and bad both. Decided to pay a visit many-a-times, but never really got to it. Finally it was yesterday when we (Meghana and I) decided to take the trip. While having lunch at McD, she suddenly got a kick to go a looong drive and so we decided to head towards MuLashi with no specific plans to visit Lavasa . But when we saw the first sign board stating Lavasa at 42 Kms in Chandani Chowk, we thought why not go to Lavasa. The road to Lavasa is nicely maintained except for few speedbreakers towards the villages near Lavasa. This was not surprising given the big clout that the city is blessed with. The good part was that there was not much traffic, so I could drive with my pace (obviously slow :)) without getting pestered with honking. The Ghat was okay to drive with some sharp U pin curves. En route to Lavasa, we happened to cross a Dam, couldn't figure out what it's name is (Varasagaon?). The place was ...

Few days back, I got to know that PMC is issuing the voter's ID card on the spot. It came as a very pleasant surprise to see that PMC is using the latest technologies to make the life simpler for both, citizens as well PMC officials. Taking advantage of summer vacations of the schools, PMC had put up booths in the schools. As a preparatory step, they distributed to the leaflets having the their personal information to the individuals. And then everyone was requested to approach the specified booth. The setup and process was very simple. Few laptops, webcams, lamination machines and printers. ○ Register yourself to complete the records ○ Approach the person with a webcam ○ Allow him to take the photo ○ Wait for 15 mins ○ Go out with your laminated voter card with photo printed on it!! This surely was a smoothest ever interaction with PMC/government department. There was another instance where Meghana registered a complaint with PMC website about the garbage collection. To ou...

2.a. AG: Assuming that the BRT is a success on Satara road, how will it be implemented for narrow roads? (Satara road is probably the widest of all, what about Karve road, JM road, the old Mumbai-Pune highway, and so on.) 2.b. JI: Is the BRT planned to let me get from anywhere to anywhere in Pune? Meaning how well covered is the network going to be that will not warrant me needing to take my vehicle out so I do not have to be at the mercy of rickshaw wallas? 2.c. PK: Why waste money on a system when it cannot be implemented across Pune? Only 1-2 roads in Pune can support exclusive lanes, then why run a pilot project which anyway will be scrapped or limited to 1-2 roads? It is a waste of tax payers money. ------------------------------------- A typical BRT road needs: a footpath, a cycle track, at least one "other vehicles" lane, one bus lane, a bus stop - all this on both sides, plus an optional bus lan e for overtaking other buses. This infrastructure needs a road width of 3...

Acknowledgements first! :) The questions were sent by: Amarendra Godbole, Gopal Phadke, Jhumkee Iyengar, Mahesh Ambi, Neeta Garud, Prateek Kaul, Shambhavi Borkar, Ujjwal Joshi. Many thanks! We have grouped the questions in 9 categories. We cover category (0 and) 1 today. ------------------------------------------------- 0. Main objectives of BRT: ( Do read the Prologue ) ------------------------------------------------- Create a "metro on tyres" on the roads to increase throughput (no of persons carried per hour by the entire transportation infrastructure), to keep pace with growing needs while providing an alternative to discourage personal transport in order to prevent congesting the roads and reduce pollution. Provide footpath/cycle tracks in the road design to sustain/ encourage non-motorized transport. All in all, provide cost effective, sustainable transportation to all sections of society. 1.a. GP: How is it different from good o...

There's lot of discussion going on about BRT in last few months. There seems to be more confusion and that too based on some prejudices and self-made-assumptions. In an attempt to answer few of those queries and create a better environment to understand the whole BRT system, few of my friends has started a series on BRT FAQ. All of us belong to a movement which is named as 'Save Pune Traffic Movement' and more details about this movement could be found here . I thank Harshad Abhyankar, Rajendra Sidhaye and other folks in the movement for allowing me to re-publish the FAQ that they are putting together with a lot of effort. BRT Prologue: What is BRT? BRT is not just high quality clean fuel buses moving in dedicated lanes at high speeds. Not just clean and well-designed bus stations, ticketing and passenger information boards, route maps etc. All these are of course important and need to be executed to the highest standard possible, but this is only part of the total pict...

Saturday evening. After a hectic day (meetings from 11 AM till 8:30 PM and off course a free lunch - courtsey: my builder) we decided to order pizza. Smokin' Joe's Kothrud was the obvious choice as they are the only ones who deliver pizza at my place near chandani chowk. 9:10 PM - Placed the order. Smokin' Joes confirmed the order to be delivered in 45-50 minutes. Last time it got delivered in dot 45 minutes. So it was ok. 9:55 PM - the delivery boy has not arrived yet 10:00 PM - Meghana calls up SJ only to know that the delivery boy has left just 5 minutes earlier. That was shoking. 45 minutes to prepare pizza .... simply unbelievable!! She decides to talk to the manager. After following a linked list and repeating the casette at each node, finally she reaches the manager 10:05 PM - The delivery boy is nowhere to be seen yet. SJ Manager is getting kicked every passing second. He also tried to use the lame excuse that the delivery boy might not have found the address. The...

For past few weeks we (me and my better half ) are continuously observing a steep downfall in the service provided by the retail chains such as Pyramid, TruMart, Spencer's Daily (formerly Food World) and the likes. Being in software industry and not yet reached to a level where one can slip out of office at 6 PM, we invariably end up visiting these supermarkets on the weekends. Typically, most of them are out of stock for half the things that we have on our list to purchase. Be it a common thing like atta or something not so common. If you are lucky enough to find the stock, it would be way old, close to the expiry date. More to your unfortune, you would spot some life, which we don't dare to it, inside the packed food item. We initially thought it's just us who are not that fortunate to find the required stuff. But after repeated instances at TruMart, Bhandarkar Road, we approached the customer helpdesk only to find that they don't keep the complaint book. To our surpr...

Just came across a website for Pune Traffic and Trasportation Forum. Seems to be a good collection of the information about traffic and transportation in the context of Pune city. So thought of putting together few sites that I feel could be useful for interested people: Pune Traffice Police Save Pune Traffic Movement Pune Traffic and Trasportation Forum Kum. Rajshree Parmar Memorial Foundation

गेल्या काही दिवसांपासून मी एका "home theatre"च्या शोधात आहे. आपसूकच माझे लक्ष "सोनी" कंपनीच्या उत्पादनाकडे गेले. मी त्यांच्या कोथरुडच्या दुकानाला भेट द्यायचे ठरवले आणि एका संध्याकाळी तिथे जावून थडकलो. एका प्रतिनिधीने स्वागत वगैरे केले. प्र.: "वेलकम सर. व्हॉट कॅन आय डू फ़ॉर यू?" मी: "होम थिएटर बघायचे आहे." प्र.: "कम धिस वे सर". प्र.: "हॅव अ सिट सर". मग आम्ही तिथल्या सोफ्यात स्थानापन्न झालो. समोरच दूरदर्शन संच, DVD player, ध्वनिवर्धक संच होते. ३ ध्वनिवर्धक पुढे आणि २ आमच्या सोफ्यापाशी. प्र.: "सर धिस इज अ ५.१ चॅनेल सिस्टीम. २ फ्रंट स्पीकर्स, २ रेअर स्पीकर्स, १ वूफर" त्यानंतर त्याने एक DVD चालू केली - डेमो. एका खोलीचे चित्र. त्यात स्पीकर्स दाखवलेले. आणि एक हेलिकॉप्टर वर घिरट्या घालत होते. ते चित्रात ज्या भागात फिरेल त्या भागातील स्पीकरमधून आवाज येत होता. कानाला खूप छान वाटले. दोन घिरट्यांनंतर प्रतिनिधीने DVD थांबवली आणि आमच्याकडे बघू लागला. आम्ही विचार करतो आहोत की हा पुढे काहीतरी बोलेल, अजून काहीतरी दाखवेल - नाही. शेवटी ...

सध्या सत्ताधारी पक्षाला 'जलद बस सेवे'चे श्रेय पदरात पाडून घेण्यापलीकडे काहिच दिसत नाही आहे. 'BRT' सेवा अपूर्णावस्थेत चालू करून त्यांनी आपली टिमकी वाजवलीच आहे. परंतु आता त्याच्यामुळे होणार्‍या अपघाताची जबाबदारी कोण घेणार आहे? काल रात्री 'BRT' च्या मार्गावरून भरधाव जाणार्‍या 'PMT' ने एका तरुणाला धडक दिल्याने त्याचा जागीच मृत्यु झाला. 'BRT' साठी वेगळा मार्ग असल्याने त्या वेगात जाणारच, परंतु, त्या मार्गावरुन 'PMT'ने जाऊ नये अशीच माफक अपेक्षा आहे. 'BRT' साठीचा मार्ग पूर्णपणे सुरक्षित झाल्याशिवाय बस सेवा सुरु करायलाच नको होती. कुठलीही योजना चालू करणे सोपे असते, परंतु त्याची बरोबर आणि योग्य अंमलबजावणीसाठी संयम आणि नियोजन लागते, ते सत्ताधार्‍यांकडे आहे का? Ref: http://esakal.com/esakal/12052006/FA9D2F32D9.htm

Some interesting topics are being discussed about the traffic problems we are facing. There are many such cities which face traffic congestion everyday. There are many traffic experts working day and night to resolve the problems. The issue seems to be really hot in the media these days. Recently PMC inaugurated the BRT project (Bus Rapid Transit) in Pune which is projected as one of the solutions for increasing traffic problems. I am, personally, of the opinion that BRT won't change the situation much. The reasons being: It needs a dedicated traffic lane in each direction. So this puts limitation on how many roads we can deploy BRT, given the situation that space is expensive (as against the digital space which is almost free these days). Major traffic travels in the direction of the core parts of the city where the roads are much narrow and there's no scope for road expansion There's a limitation on number of passangers that can travel in one direction through bus. We usu...