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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.)

Clever seat selection helped BJP to secure historic win

The party won 65 seats against Congress, 37 against NCP (SP) and 29 against Shiv Sena (UBT)

Clever seat selection

Mumbai: The BJP’s strategic seat sharing with the allies has proved beneficial for the party. An analysis of the Assembly election results show that the BJP has scored over its main rival, the Congress, in a big way because of the direct fights.


The analysis shows that BJP defeated all three constituents of the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) – Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (SP) – in the direct fights. This is attributed as one of the reasons for the BJP’s historic poll success.


The BJP contested 147 out of 288 seats. In 76 constituencies, it faced Congress. BJP secured victory in 65 seats and lost only 11 seats, making it a whopping 86 per cent of the total direct fights. This was followed by an even stronger performance against NCP (SP). Of the total 39 fights with Sharad Pawar’s party, BJP captured 37 seats making it 95 per cent of the total fights with NCP (SP). BJP and Shiv Sena (UBT) were head-to-head in 32 constituencies, of which BJP emerged victorious in 29 seats, making this 91 per cent of the total direct contests.


According to a BJP strategist the party had bargained hard with its allies, Shiv Sena and NCP to get the desired constituencies in the seat sharing formula. “We had studied to potential candidates of the MVA. That helped us in choosing the seats where we can register comfortable victories,” the strategist said.


BJP spokesperson Niranjan Shetty attributed the success to all the party workers who worked hard to boost development, infrastructure in the state. He gave credit to Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis for his contribution to the party’s success.


Shetty pointed out that in 2019, Uddhav Thackeray had stalled all the “novel” and “legendary” projects that Fadnavis had started when he had taken over as CM, making it very easy for the people of Maharashtra to strike a comparison between both the leaders and the potential they had for serving the people. “Devendra Fadnavis gave up his post very easily for the larger good. There are many such examples like Venkaiah Naidu who was BJP National President and later worked as the Vice President of India because that was the need of the hour. We seldom care about our posts,” Shetty told The Perfect Voice.


Congress spokesperson Atul Londhe refused to call the election results as the people’s mandate. “This is not at all a Janata mandate. Despite Maharashtra struggling with so many basic social issues, how can BJP acquire such a huge mandate is the question. If a student copies and fails with just passing marks, it can go unnoticed, but if a student copies and bags the number one position, something is fishy. Why is the BJP scared of ballot papers?” he said.

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