India: $2500 car, boon or bane?

by Abha Malpani on

For a measly US$2,500, Tata Motors has launched “Nano”– the world’s cheapest car — making the 4-wheel mode of transport less of a luxury and more of an affordable means of transport for millions of Indians. The car is said to meet all safety norms and apparently emits less pollution than a two-wheeler. With India’s huge lower / middle class population that depends on its two-wheelers, a reliable car at this price would encourage the shift and begin a revolution in transport in the country.

Well, that’s what they are saying.

In India, other than the the issue of affordability, the reason why many people opt for a scooter or a motorcycle, is because of the ghastly state of traffic and driving in the country. I strongly believe that if you can drive in India, you can drive anywhere in the world. It probably has the most undisciplined road traffic on the planet (absolutely out-of-control, actually!), and surely ranks high in the list of world’s worst roads; the most convenient way to get anywhere quickly is therefore a two-wheeler.

An Indian’s skill set to maneuver a motorbike around others, bulls, cars, bicycles, people and potholes is truly fascinating and practicality issues make me wonder whether the scooter-driving target audience will want to switch. When I lived in India, if four of us were to go out, we would always opt to go on our automatic scooters rather than AC cars. As for the Nano being a transport solution for young families, it’s not uncommon to see a nuclear family travel on a scooter — something they are so used to, it doesn’t have the word dangerous associated to it anymore. Also, I don’t think Indian roads can handle more cars! I don’t think the Nano can substitute two-wheelers in India and they will remain the fastest and cheapest mode of transport.

So, although I’m proud that India beat China in this endeavor, I wonder if it was really worth it.

Is automated personal transport the future?

by Abha Malpani on

No, it’s not a gigantic toaster on wheels nor an alien’s toy car, it’s Britain’s answer to rail-free, time-table free, emission-free personal transport.

Planned for launch sometime after the opening of Heathrow’s terminal 5, these pod-shaped capsules will transport people from the car park to the new terminal, and on demand, will be available within 12 seconds!

The battery run capsules take four people at a time and are pre-programmed. You will be able to pick them up at designated spots where they will be waiting, or you can call for one. You then select your destination on the touch screen and the capsule will mark out the best possible route to take you there. (GPS taken to a new dimension?) They will have their own paths, so congestion and traffic lights will not be an issue.

The main selling point of these Personal Transport Systems (PRT) as they are called, will be their convenience: you will no longer have to wait in queues, nor share transport with strangers, and your transit time from car to airport will be reduced to 4 minutes. The capsules are as green as they can get: they use less than half the amount of fuel used by public or private transport making them at least 50% more energy efficient, and have zero local emissions.

Once tried and tested, the plan is to expand their use as valuable complements to mass transit systems in big cities. I wonder how much a trip in these would cost?

Automated parking systems, and now this, Heathrow seems to be on a roll for setting new standards.

A Keyhole into Burma – The ass-poundingest transport on Earth

by Leif Pettersen on

I’m not gonna lie to you. Getting around in Burma is quite literally a pain in the ass. What with my trip involving so many long haul voyages in so little time, I was verily spanked into submission by a variety of seats, chairs, benches, and stools, reducing me to standing for dinner by the end of the trip.

Arguably, the brunt of the damage was done on the first trip, an 18 hour bus ride from Yangon to Inle Lake. I was the only Pinkie on the bus (indeed, the only Pinkie in the bus station), which left at noon in 104 degree heat.

It was supposed to be an air conditioned bus, and it did indeed have air-con, but the air flow was at such a pathetic trickle that you couldn’t actually feel cool air unless you put your hand directly on the vent. Moreover, when the bus was moving the air flow all but ceased, as if the bus was outrunning the air oozing through the shafts before it could reach the overhead vents, except up front directly next to the driver where sweet, cool air blasted out at gale force.

The bus was packed. Every seat was taken, including the fold-down, death seats in the aisle that virtually guaranteed a trampling-related injury if anything more serious than an urgent bathroom episode arose.

Though I suffered greatly (and wrote about it at a length that would eventually cause others to suffer equally) it was on this trip that I saw something that made me (briefly) forget my discomfort. Not long after leaving Yangon, we passed a bus that had been altered into a double-decker without adding any ceiling space. A slap-dash infrastructure had been welded together, splitting it into two tiny, cramped levels. The bus was full to bursting. People were folded up and jammed in like cookies with only enough space to sit on the floor in a permanent squat. If we hadn’t been passing it at 80 KPH, I would have taken a picture for evidence to send to human rights groups.

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When we hit the mountains the sealed, relatively smooth road ended and the precipitous, climbing and descending, narrow, dirt, unprotected, winding, glorified donkey cart trail began. Passing oncoming vehicles was delicate at the best of times and I was grateful to be seated far enough back in the bus that I couldn’t see how we were about to die until after we’d narrowly avoided it.

The train from Mandalay to Bagan was unfathomably worse. My ‘upper class’ ticket that Lonely Planet promised would get me into a reclining bucket seat, only bought me half of a maliciously designed wooden bench, with a seat pad the thickness of toast. Still, it was heaps better than ‘second class’, which meant sitting on the floor of a box car. The unforgiving bench and the rattling, spine grinding ride kept me miserably awake and in pain for the entire nine hours.

Airplane seats are the same cushion-free caliber as the buses, though at least you don’t sit in them for double digit hours. I had no idea that passenger planes came with seat options this harsh. The upshot was that they actually served a meal. Tuna sandwiches. As potentially sorry as this sounds, they were very tasty, making me realize that I really missed tuna, of all things.

Leif Pettersen, originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, contributed three stories to the upcoming anthology “To Myanmar (Burma) With Love: A Connoisseur’s Guide” published by Things Asian Press. His personal blog, Killing Batteries, and his staggeringly vast travelogue could fill a lifetime of unauthorized work breaks, if one were so inclined.