Eventful week for mobility in Mumbai

[Jyot Chadha]

We’ve had an eventful week in Mumbai, starting off with the taxi / auto strike on Monday and an article in the ET today by Mumbai’s municipal corporation to put a ceiling on vehicle registration.

 

Protests against aggregators were led by Shashank Rao (head of the Mumbai Autorickshaw-Taximen’s union). In addition, the union was protesting the increase in charges for auto and taxi permits from INR200 to INR15,200 by the RTO. The impact of this strike compared to the strikes in 2015 is noteworthy. In 2015, Uber announced that they would #KeepMumbaiMoving and not apply surge pricing during taxi / auto strike days. This time around, there was no such announcement and surge pricing of up to 5x was witnessed.

 

The backdrop to these protests is the need for clarity on how aggregators will be regulated in the state. In September 2015, the transport commissioner made their draft policy for aggregators in Maharashtra available for comment by all stakeholders. We also supported these efforts by hosting a roundtable with the support of Gautam Chatterjee and Sonia Sethi. Comments from all stakeholders were presented to the commissioner. Final guidelines have yet to come out – perhaps this has been delayed by the replacement of Sonia Sethi by Shyam Wardhane? Also, Gautam Chatterjee retired in January this year.

 

More details are yet to come out on the proposal to put a ceiling on vehicle registrations in the city. Suggestions include a ban on new car and bike registrations after a cutoff date, a ceiling on new registrations each year, and approving registrations only after proof of parking space. It makes me think about how such a proposal will impact people buying personal vehicles vs shared mobility businesses. Thoughts?

Lastly, applications to the New Mobility Accelerator are pouring in! Last date to apply is 7 March.

 

With best regards,

 

-- 

Jyot Chadha

Head – Urban Innovation

Sustainable Cities

WRI India

WRIcitiesIndia.org

 

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[Anirudh Tagat]

Thanks for sharing, Jyot! I think it's quite interesting that Uber decided not to be altruistic any more when it came to surge pricing at the time of auto-rickshaw strikes this week. It might be motivated by the idea that their ridership is in a much better place (and plans to be in an even stronger position by the end of the year) so they don't need to incentivize those shifting from auto-rickshaws -- speaking from personal experience, even I took an Uber on the day that the auto-rickshaws were on strike.

The ban on vehicle registrations, however, appears to be coloured by some sort-of political economy at play by the Maharashtra government trying to do something as 'drastic' in the policy space as was done in Delhi. While much has already been written about the pros and cons of the Delhi Odd-Even experiment, I think it would be worth seeing this new proposal in the context of Anand Mahindra's comments earlier last year on ridesharing services eating into automotive sales. Essentially, one way to stem the increase in vehicular registrations is to put in place sustainable guidelines for ridesharing innovations -- e.g. ZipGo's operations in Bangalore have suffered numerous setbacks due to policy grey areas. 

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Anirudh Tagat

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[Dhivik A]

Nice update there Jyot. Anirudh to add to the problems that ZipGo had in Bangalore, now Ola is coming out with TempoTravellers to ferry people around. What would be interesting to see is what was right and wrong about ZipGo’s operations. Also to add to the shared mobility part there was this one line that i spoke about to a few CIO’s at a meet and this probably is the way forward “ 
Owned will be Shared ! Driven will “be driven”  !Online all the time !  and a very nice article posted by an acquaintance of mine on linkedin shows why the next 15 years would bring in drastic change in the Automobile Industry. 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/vision-2030-why-automotive-industry-undergo-dramatic-james-carter?trk=mp-reader-card

Best Regards, 

Dhivik A 

Exec. Director 

Go GreenBOV 

India 

dhi...@gogreenbov.com

[Jyot Chadha]

I like that one liner @Dhivik!

Another one liner making the rounds is about all transport eventually having ACES - autonomous, connected, electric, and shared!

@Annirudh, that statement by Anand Mahindra was actually a bit unexpected when all the other auto manufacturers are getting on boards with ACES eg the Lyft-GM partnership (http://www.wsj.com/articles/gm-invests-500-million-in-lyft-plans-system-for-self-driving-cars-1451914204) and many other such examples. But of course, in India given the low vehicle penetration, this is probably not an immediate concern. 

--

Jyot Chadha

Head - Urban Innovation

WRI Sustainable Cities

Twitter: @jyotchadha

<image003.jpg>

 

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Anirudh Tagat

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Phone: +919619814988

[Anirudh Tagat]

Dhivik -- Yes, I think the ZipGo experience should be able to tell us a lot, I was wondering if anyone from there is on the group here. 

Jyot -- Especially given the low vehicle penetration, I think that his comments are only relevant to something that may happen in the future (perhaps in the next 10 years), but I suppose what is being stoked is the competition in the automobile industry. 

As a (mostly) off-topic discussion, I'm also quite interested to see what happens to sales of a particular car brand when it is commonly accepted as a travel vehicle or taxi (e.g. Toyota Innova). If consumer perception matters, then a potential car owner might not prefer to buy a car that is already perceived as a taxi (and therefore does not grant much exclusivity to owners) -- this might ultimately reduce car sales a great deal, don't you think?

[Dhivik A]

@anirudh : that is exactly what has happened with the TATA’s. Indica their first flagship car nailed it in the taxi segment. Post that they are trying to do their best with all their cars viz. Zica, Zest, Indigo, Bolt & also the Nano but they havent been able to pull it up the sleeve. Having said that i think its more an Indian thing/ Indian mindset rather than worldwide 

@jyot : do you see/ perceive that we might end up skipping deeper vehicle penetration in India and straight moving to the shared model ?  Safely assuming that the growth impetus is there within our economy, people are also getting more smarter. They are understanding vehicles as nothing more of a depreciative value if used in cities and are moving towards the shared economy.   

Looks like its all coming a full circle. Prehistoric times tools which was picked by a community were shared in the community ; we moved to purchased for social status ; now its back to shared ! 

Best Regards, 

Dhivik A 

Exec. Director 

Go GreenBOV 

India 

dhi...@gogreenbov.com

Protests against aggregators were led by Shashank Rao (head of the Mumbai Autorickshaw-Taximen’s union). In addition, the union was protesting the increase in charges for auto and taxi permits from INR200 to INR15,200 by the RTO. The impact of this strike compared to thestrikes in 2015 is noteworthy. In 2015, Uber announced that they would #KeepMumbaiMoving and not apply surge pricing during taxi / auto strike days. This time around, there was no such announcement and surge pricing of up to 5x was witnessed. 

<image003.jpg>

 

[Anirudh Tagat]

That's a very good example, especially since Indica has been in the market for quite a while! Agree that it may largely be an Indian mindset, but it would be interesting to study this in greater detail and backed with data.

[Jyot Chadha]

The best scenario would be we leapfrog over owning vehicles (the way we bypassed landlines and went straight to mobiles) to being able to utilize transport services. However, the importance of good connectivity, walking and cycling infra, and the improvement of public transport will be critical. As we often say, we need to connect the dots better!

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From: Anirudh Tagat <ata...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, February 19, 2016 1:01 PM
To: Dhivik A
Cc: Jyot Chadha; mobilityi...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [mobilityinnovators] Eventful week for mobility in Mumbai

 

[Arjit Soni | MYBYK]

Dear All,

 

Request you to go through my blog https://medium.com/@MYBYK/bike2work-social-stigma-is-it-7d38daaf229f which explains my view on how cars became aspirational and no longer continue to be. It also highlights the wrong perception of social stigma that some people have for cycles.

 

From what I can foresee, time and space (parking) are critical resources that are limited (finite) in their supply and consequently their value is only going to go up. Thus, any idea that can help reduce their consumption is bound to succeed. To be specific, private vehicles cannot grow beyond a point cause parking seems to be a more scarce commodity than petrol. While Ola/Uber do address this issue of parking, are they really for the masses? This brings me to public transport for which I see a bright future. However, public transport suffers from the acute limitation of first & last mile connectivity which we are trying to address through MYBYK.

 

It doesn’t matter whether parking needs to be regulated. Frankly, I am happy to see more and more people buy cars and later realising its hell more inconvenient (due to the struggle for parking) for this would be a lesson learnt well. Future is inevitably of public transport.

 

Regards,

 

CA Arjit Soni
Founding Director
MYBYK
(+91) 75730 24030

[Jyot Chadha]

Leaving the politics aside, the Delhi even / odd experiment was a decent barometer for perceptions towards using more sustainable transport and using cars less. I know AAP did a survey - I wonder if they'll make their results public.

Arjit, I hope you're applying to the accelerator (wricitieshub.org/accelerator)!

Jyot

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From: Arjit Soni | MYBYK <ar...@mybyk.in>
Sent: Friday, February 19, 2016 1:49 PM
To: Jyot Chadha; 'Anirudh Tagat'; 'Dhivik A'
Cc: mobilityi...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: [mobilityinnovators] Eventful week for mobility in Mumbai

 

[Amit Singh]

People don't need cars. They need a seat and some convenience. Today that seat and convenience is offered by cars/ cabs which leads to collective sub optimal outcome. But unless we solve for assured seat and baseline convenience it's difficult to move people away from cars.

Buses on the other hand are most space efficient and cost efficient way of moving people within cities. Imagine 1-2 people per car vs 40 people per bus!

We believe that as the network of buses increase and the service levels improve, the shift will happen. Till then we need to educate people to choose city (mass transport) over self (personal car) and work towards global maxima.

Amit Singh
Shuttl