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By:

Reeva Sakaria

8 November 2025 at 3:04:18 pm

How transport systems make urban life easier

Did you know Mumbai commuters lose hundreds of hours every year not in distance, but in delays, waiting, and uncertainty. In Mumbai, commuting can feel like a challenge, but technology is quietly changing that. Intelligent transport systems (ITS) are helping people navigate the city more efficiently by combining real-time data, adaptive routing, and smart coordination across trains, metros, monorails, buses, and last-mile options. At the forefront of this transformation is Yatri, Mumbai’s...

How transport systems make urban life easier

Did you know Mumbai commuters lose hundreds of hours every year not in distance, but in delays, waiting, and uncertainty. In Mumbai, commuting can feel like a challenge, but technology is quietly changing that. Intelligent transport systems (ITS) are helping people navigate the city more efficiently by combining real-time data, adaptive routing, and smart coordination across trains, metros, monorails, buses, and last-mile options. At the forefront of this transformation is Yatri, Mumbai’s official local app. Using ITS, Yatri shows the best combination of transport modes in real time, provides accurate live locations of trains and metros, and even enables smart, easy metro ticketing via QR codes. The result: a commute that’s no longer an uncertain experience, but a predictable, stressfree journey. It’s 8:20 a.m., and you have a 9:30 a.m. meeting in BKC, at a place you’ve never been to before. You pause for a moment, weighing your options. Do you risk sitting in traffic in a cab, watching the minutes tick by, or take a train and hope you don’t miss it by a minute? Will one small delay early in the journey quietly snowball into being late? This familiar moment of hesitation is something countless commuters in Mumbai experience every single day. In a city like ours, peak-hour travel is rarely linear. A route that looks manageable on a map can quietly stretch from under an hour to well over 80 minutes, with average speeds during rush hour dropping to 10–15 km/h on key corridors. Over time, I’ve noticed how commuters adapt: leaving earlier than necessary, padding schedules with buffers, mentally preparing for delays, carrying the cognitive load of uncertainty long before the journey even begins. What often goes unnoticed is how strong Mumbai’s public transport network already is. Every day, local trains carry nearly 7 million people across the city. Metros cut through peak-hour chaos with steady, reliable travel times. Buses, autorickshaws, skywalks, and short walks quietly take care of the last mile. But in real life, the challenge isn’t availability—it’s coordination. When commuters are forced to mentally stitch together trains, buses, metros, and walking routes without reliable information, they default to what feels familiar rather than what’s efficient. Take a common rush-hour commute from Lower Parel to Andheri East. By road alone, this journey can easily take 75–90 minutes on a bad day as traffic slows unpredictably. But when modes are combined, walking to Lower Parel station, taking a local train to Andheri, switching to the metro, and finishing with a short walk, the trip often takes just 45–55 minutes. That’s a time saving of 30–40 minutes per trip. Over a five-day workweek, that adds up to 2.5 - 3 hours; over a year, more than 100 hours reclaimed, time that would otherwise be lost to waiting, guesswork, and congestion. According to a report by The Times of India, using real-time data and adaptive routing, intelligent transport systems can cut commute times by 30–40% and reduce congestion hours by up to 35%. Cities around the world that have adopted ITS are already seeing the impact: fewer hours wasted inching through traffic, and more time getting where people need to be. What excites me most is how commuters themselves are becoming part of the solution. An overcrowded train, a signal failure, or a last-minute platform change often unfolds in real time through shared updates. On Yatri chat, people flag delays, confirm train arrivals, and alert fellow travellers before official announcements. This two-way flow, where technology is strengthened by human insights, creates a living, responsive network rather than a static schedule. Yatri brings journey planning, metro ticketing, live train locations, and real-time travel information into a single platform, helping commuters navigate efficiently across local trains, metros, monorails, buses, and last-mile options without guesswork. By combining intelligent transport systems with real-time updates from both technology and fellow travellers, journeys become predictable, stress-free, and under control, making cities feel smaller, connections closer, and everyday life just a little easier to navigate. The writer is a co-founder of Yatri. Views personal.)

Why is Mamata Seeing Ghost of Bangladesh?

Updated: Oct 21, 2024

Why is Mamata Seeing Ghost of Bangladesh?

Mamata is seeing a ghost of Bangladesh behind the massive outrage and waves of protest over rape and murder of the trainee doctor. And the reasons are many.

It’s been over a fortnight. Yet with each passing day the voice of protest is getting louder and stronger. From the streets of Kolkata it’s pouring into roads of hinterland. The cry for justice for a rape victim has consolidated into a wail of demands to set a lot of wrongdoings right. Here in lies the fear and trepidation. Wasn’t the issue that brought the youth of Bangladesh out on the thoroughfares a simple, innocent one of quota reform?

The chief minister of Bengal, known for understanding the pulse of people better than many, was quick to read the signages floating in the political horizon.

The most obvious reason for her to be tensed is that both the regime change in Bangladesh and the mass protest in Bengal, were student-driven to begin with. The two incidents---end of 15 year old Sheikh Hasina government and turbulence in West Bengal, over the heinous crime, falling back to back, the first on August 5th and the latter from August 9th onwards, give natural scope for comparisons. More so, because in both the cases the movement strayed beyond an affected constituency to include aggrieved people at large, cutting across socio-economic demography. If the quota reform protest started by students in Bangladesh became a mass uprising against an autocratic regime, the campaign demanding justice for the rape victim and overall safety and security of women in Mamata Banerjee’s Bengal soon snowballed into a movement of no-confidence against the government. Slogans--”Mamata must resign” also got floated in social media much in line with the call for ouster of Sheikh Hasina. In fact “Resignation of Hasina” became the single point agenda into which all other fringe demands coalesced.

Incidentally, even before people started drawing parallels, that there could be a thread of commonality in the way the upheaval in Bangladesh and Bengal played out, Mamata was quick to point out that the Opposition were trying to pull off a Bangladesh by politicizing the tragic incident: “A coordinated approach has been executed by the BJP and the CPIM with support from the Centre to defame Bengal and exploit the situation....They want to make a Bangladesh here. They are taking cues from student unrest in Bangladesh and are attempting to capture similarly. I have no longing for the chair. I came here to serve people.”

Not only Mamata, her political lieutenants are consistently equating the turmoil in Bengal with the mayhem in Bangladesh. Cabinet minister for North Bengal development Udayan Guha threatened to take stern action against those, who would be trying to exploit the situation by emulating a Bangladesh like movement. “ Even after the hospital was vandalised, the police did not open fire on anyone. The police will not allow a Bangladesh type situation. We will not allow Bengal to turn into Bangladesh, Guha thundered.

Is the government’s fear unfounded?

Apart from the similarities on ground zero, as to how and where the future course of events are heading to, there are ample reasons for Bengal to mull on-- as to what led to a Bangladesh like boiling point. To begin with, it’ll be appropriate to talk of Bangladesh and the prevailing situation, that made the students’ protest become big in magnitude. The students were out on the streets because of a high reservation in public jobs. Unemployment and stagnant job market in private sector coupled with a high rate of inflation drove the educated youth to rebel against the government.

But soon the students found enormous number of sympathisers, who were equally at the receiving end. According to Bangladesh citizens, the last two terms of the Sheikh Hasina government were a mockery of democracy. Even elections would be compromised. As Hasina grew from strength to strength, she politicized institutions. The rank and file of police owed allegiance to the ruling dispensation. Extortion, harrassment and raids by police and people in power became rampant. An atmosphere of fear and repression reigned and people got restless to overthrow the government.

Politicization of institutions has been happening in Mamata government too. Allegations are quite strong that police in Bengal functions at the beck and call of political bosses. The lapses and alleged loopholes on the part of police in handling the rape and murder of the young doctor have yet again revealed a sense of confused or misplaced loyalty.

But above everything else both Hasina and Mamata governments allegedly seem to have twined in accepting corruption as a way of life. In Bangladesh jobs of primary and secondary teachers got sold at premium, Rs 10-12 lakh in the Hasina regime. Even police had to pay up for prized postings and transfers. In Bengal busting of the teacher’s recruitment scam has revealed how unsuccessful and ineligible candidates got government jobs in schools in exchange of bribes.

Similarities are multiple and inescapable. Mamata has good reasons to be apprehensive. It’s not only she, who can see and connect the dots. People, out on the streets, clamoring for justice, can see a providential pattern somewhere in the unfolding of future events in these two places-- Bangladesh and Bengal. True, they share more than 2,217 odd km of border. They share the same umbilical cord, other than language, culture, ethos, icons. Even emotions are the same. So she cannot take any risk.

(The writer is a senior jounalist based in Kolkata. Views personal)

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