Saturday 7 November 2015

HaaS

I am not able to get on with my one-blog-post-per-week routine. I have a set of blog posts in various stages of writing, some just being a title to some being almost completed pieces. And I usually upload them on Fridays.

If I missed the Friday mood and deadline, I wait till next Friday to post. But now the gap between posts are increasing. So I thought I will do a small emergency post.

Today is Saturday and on Saturdays the road traffic is a bit lesser than week days. The peak congestion hours in Hyderabad are 10 am - 12 noon and 6:30 p.m. to around 9 p.m. And during these peak hours, a travel that take 30 - 40 minutes ends up taking 1 - 1.5 hours.


A "free left" near KBR Park.

During these hours, even the “free lefts” at the signals are blocked by vehicles. During the monsoon, it gets even worse. How many times one flusters, God I just want to get out of this mess!

When stuck in such traffic, I wish my car becomes a robot and flies like in Transformers. Humanity has this habit of converting science fiction to reality. If not a flying car, the city should have intra-city helicopter transportation.

We now have road transportation and rail transportation in the city. So next should be air. During peak hours, we need to have helicopters. We can have helipads on the buildings. So there is no need for land acquisition / leasing or digging.

Some one told me that there are government strictures not permitting drones. I am not sure about helicopters though. But if there is enough public opinion and commercial demand, governments will give the permissions. A few years back, there was a helicopter service from Novotel Hotel, Kondapur to Shamshabad airport. But the service went off quickly, probably because it was not commercially viable.

Who knew that taxis would be as cheaper or cheaper than rickshaw? Taxi aggregators have been game changers. Even if the Metro rail takes away some of the loads off the road, I think there will be enough demand for helicopter services during peak hours.

Some one like Ola or Uber have to just start it off and make it affordable. So here it is, as an idea: Building Hoppers, the free affordable helicopter as a service (haas) during peak road traffic hours.

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