Sailing through the odds -Governance Now

Sailing through the odds

Being a Saturday the traffic was less, but so were odd-numbered cars

Ridhima Kumar | January 2, 2016 | New Delhi

After months of mulling and contemplation, today I finally decided to car-pool with a colleague, who lives just five minutes away from my home in Indirapuram, to office. Our office is in Sector 16 of Noida. We should have started car-pooling months back, but the new regulations and the new year gave us a new resolution. As they say, better late than never.

I have an odd-numbered car and today is an even date. Of course, as a woman driver I come under the exempted category, but then after months of coughing and sore throat I thought the time had finally come to take some action.

READ: An odd logic, even by AAP standards

Initially, I thought I could hitch a ride with my brother and he could drop me somewhere midway. But my brother too has an odd-numbered car. So car-pooling with him was out of question. In fact, to my surprise, he took a Metro ride today to reach his office. A great start by him – considering his aversion to public transport. He, however, had to take the driver along in the Metro: after all, the odd-even formula doesn’t mean that the driver gets an off on even days!

As I waited for my colleague at the main gate of my society, I noticed all even-numbered cars plying on the road. The cars which were odd-numbered all came under exemption – some had women drivers, some CNG stickers and some ‘judge’ stickers. Though I spotted two or three odd-numbered cars, on the whole people were following the rule.

My colleague arrived in her bright yellow car. After greeting ‘happy new year’ to each other we embarked on our journey.

Our office is around 15 km from our place. Sometimes we take the Noida route, but mostly we prefer the Akshardham route. No matter which route we take it takes 40-45 minutes to reach office. Today, being a Saturday the traffic was understandably less and we reached office in 20 minutes flat. But to our surprise we could see only even-numbered cars on our way. We also noticed an unusual sight – the presence of police personnel on various intersections. Though we did see some odd-numbered cars on the way, most of them were under the exempted category.

So far it was a smooth ride for us and we hope to continue our mission of car-pooling. However, the real test of the odd-even formula will be on Monday, when people would start returning from their long weekend vacations. Till then let’s keep our fingers crossed and our hopes alive.

PS: On reaching office I called my brother to enquire about the passenger rush in Metro. He said it was less but sceptically added that it was because of a Saturday.

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