Last Mile Connectivity Redefined

 

The introduction of electric bike-sharing services such as Yulu or Bounce has come as a big relief to app-driven millennials and Generation Z in Bengaluru and metro cities. 

These platforms aim to provide college students and young professionals, who commute by bus or metro, with vital last-mile connectivity from bus stands and metro stations to their homes and offices.

However, thanks to the Indian jugaad mentality, the users have discovered that the utility value of these diminutive battery-driven cycles goes way beyond the stated objective of last-mile connectivity. They began using it for joyrides, and short-haul errands and novice two-wheeler riders found the low-seated Yulu bikes were a good way to hone their balancing skills, as they can always put down their feet if things go wrong. 

While riding these bikes safety takes a back seat. Hardly any of the riders wear a helmet and many of them appear to be underage for a driving licence. In the hands of some overweight riders, these bikes appear like beasts of burden.  

Moreover, these bikes, especially the Yulu ones, appear so frail that even a minor collision with autorickshaws could lead to loss of life. They also lack other safety features such as indicators or rear-view mirrors that could help them avoid getting knocked down from the rear. Due to their small size, they do not meet the eye levels of bigger vehicles and run the risk of being trampled upon by burly trucks.

But despite all these shortcomings, these bikes are getting popular by the day and caught the fancy of startups looking to reduce their carbon footprint. Food delivery aggregators like Swiggy and Zomato, and quick commerce firm Dunzo have also decided to hitch a ride with Yulu, to improve their carbon footprint. This has led to an exponential increase in the number of Yulu vehicles, and delivery boys often lug out their voluminous bags onto these tiny bikes during their distribution rounds.

However, this proliferation of bikes has given rise to a host of problems, both for the companies and residents. The companies face the challenge of misuse, theft, and vandalism. 

They claim some users park bikes in a wayward manner at flyovers, footpaths, and residential areas, with total disregard to road discipline and civic sense. For the companies, it is a challenge to locate the parked bikes using GPS and related tracking technologies. Their recovery trucks have to travel long distances to find and collect the bikes. 

For many residents, these bikes are a nuisance as they often get abandoned by unscrupulous users right next to their doorstep. Though companies claim they penalize users who park bikes away from designated spaces, the menace continues.

In fact, in Bengaluru wherever you go, you are never away from an abandoned Yulu or Bounce bike. Recently there was even a social media post of a Yulu bike found in a lake bed in Bengaluru when it was getting cleaned up!

Another major challenge is theft. Though the companies have technology in place to prevent someone from stealing a bike in toto, they still have to contend with thefts of parts such as batteries, tyres, and headlights. Companies often end up spending crores to replace the missing parts and file numerous cases in police stations. 

But despite all these shortcomings, electric bike shared mobility platforms offer a welcome relief from haggling with auto drivers or a long wait for buses for last-mile connectivity. 

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Underage Driving: Menace on Wheels

A scene near a junction in Koramangala: Three boys clad in school uniform on a scooter graze past a Volkswagen Vento resulting in scratches on the rear end of the car. The trio had a minor fall but they immediately get up and race away before the middle aged car driver could do anything other than come out of his vehicle and throw up his hands in helplessness. The school kids fled unmindful of their minor injuries because they had breached three traffic rules (a) Riding triple on a bike (b) None of them were wearing helmet and (c) The guy riding the bike probably was nowhere old enough to have a licence!

Though the above incident may be dismissed as a harmless prank by restless teenagers, but quite often the consequences are far more disastrous, often causing serious injuries and even deaths to the riders and pedestrians.

The presence of a vehicle at their home often works as a huge motivator to learn how to handle them, especially when it happens to be of their siblings. A beginning is made by fiddling with horn and then, in case of two-wheelers, sitting on it to check if their legs are long enough to touch the ground. Then they graduate to getting a hang of brake and gear. Nothing gives them a bigger kick to impress their friends by flaunting their driving skills.

In many cases the parents too encourage and even feel proud that their underage ward has become an 'expert' driver of a scooter or car and see it as a sign of being adventurous. They see in them something they couldn't accomplish while they were young, in those licence-permit raj days even a cycle was a luxury. For many affluent parents it is the guilt of not have much time for their children that motivates them to gift them two-wheelers to keep them happy or else to keep up with the neighbours. Some are conscientious enough not to let their wards use two-wheelers to school, but allow them to use it while going for tuition, in order beat poor bus connectivity, and save time.

However, these coming of age rides do go awry leading to accidents and the subsequent brush with law makes the whole picture messy as the law sees accidents caused by someone without licence as criminal offence and makes parents too responsible. They are also barred from claiming insurance.

For parents it’s a huge embarrassment to step into police stations and they use all their clout to avoid it. Then they move heaven and earth to keep their children out of juvenile homes. Hence in most cases when an underage driver gets involved in accident, he flees the scene and later an older person with driving licence shows up to claim responsibility, to dilute the offence - as it happened in the recent episode involving the scion of India's richest family in Mumbai. The same trick was unsuccessfully tried at an earlier accident involving a prominent realtor's son in Bangalore. This tendency to go to any extent to save their wards only encourages underage driving and then even graduates to dangerous stunts like wheelies and drag racing.

Another issue that gets hardly reported is that of cleaning boys taking over the wheels of trucks on highways or while driving water lorries and tractors within the city. Drivers, who may be either tired or drunk, happily hand over the wheels to these boys, who may be barely aware of concepts like licence, often with disastrous consequences.

The business of preventing underage brats from using vehicles rests mainly with parents, followed by the police and schools.

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Bangalore Auto Drivers' Manifesto

Politeness is as alien to us as a pothole-free road or a well-paved litter free footpath in the city. If you find a polite auto driver, then you might as well buy a lottery ticket and be assured that lady luck will smile on you.

We strongly believe in the credo 'taking someone for a ride' and have even applied for an ISO certification in this regard. However, the insiders there have cautioned that we are in for a stiff competition from our counterparts in Chennai and Delhi. So we have to be on our toes and keep thinking about innovative ways to implement our credo.

Meters are meant to be ornamental, but sometimes we have to oblige pesky customers, who think they are doing something smart. Little do they know that our meters don't run as per distance covered, but on jumps and jerks the vehicle experiences on hitting potholes and speed breakers.

The fare meter works in different ways vis-a-vis potholes and speed breakers. As for potholes it is inversely proportional - the deeper the pothole, the higher the quantum jump in the meter. Whereas in case of speed breakers it is directly proportional. And in this regard we specially thank BBMP, BWSSB, telecom companies for tirelessly working round the clock to ensure that we are never away from potholes. We also thank the citizens of Namma Bengaluru for being generous in erecting unauthorised speed breakers every 20-30 feet distance on bylanes and that too more than double the Government stipulated height.  

We are hypersensitive towards distances and have a narrow range of 2 to 5 kilometres. Anything less or beyond is treated as if the customer has asked for a free ride to Mars or Pluto. This gesture (of contemptuously driving away without any basic courtesy of saying 'yes' or 'no') has earned us a global patent and you will not find it among drivers in any other city. In case if you come across any auto driver from other city trying to imitate us, please bring it to our notice (for contact number you can check out our website) so that we can begin legal proceedings.

Although traffic police have stipulated timings for charging one-and-half and double fares we believe that time is a continuum and hence cannot be compartmentalised. Our excuses to charge extra fare may range from somewhat plausible (we may not get passengers while returning) to whatever we feel like at the moment (it is raining ... lot of traffic ... I have headache ... and the like).

It is our birthright to stalk passengers alighting from trains and outstation buses. Also the right to exercise it much more aggressively during odd hours and quote fares which may well be higher than what the passengers may have paid for their train or bus journey.

Lastly, we have every right to enjoy pleasant afternoons by indulging in a siesta on the back seat of autos and woe betide if anyone tries to wake us!

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