Traffic police "bar" puts the brakes on rickshaw rides

MUMBAI, November 22: The slim metal bar which closes off the right end of autorickshaws to exit or entry has fuelled controversy in the subu...

MUMBAI, November 22: The slim metal bar which closes off the right end of autorickshaws to exit or entry has fuelled controversy in the suburbs of Dombivli, Kalyan, Shahad, Ambernath, Ulhasnagar and Badlapur. Traffic police have, since November 15, been springing checks on rickshaws and making drivers install the bar in vehicles.

The drive, however, has struck at the very core of rickshaw travelling in these suburbs: The seat sharing system. With no public bus system in place yet, the 60 lakh strong population ferries across the sprawling suburbs in over 35,000 autorickshaws, and in lieu of a tariff system, passengers prefer sharing seats on a fixed rate to haggling over fares. As well as alighting and embarking from any side of the rickshaw. Lamented rickshaw driver Rama Ghag, “A group of eight traffic cops standing at the Karnik Road crossing forced us to stop and get a metal bar welded on to the right exit for Rs 22.” The police had not given rickshawwallahs adequate notice about the drive, he stated.Drivers have also alleged that the police are making them install the bars at `select’ workshops.

Countered Kalyan traffic in-charge B G Gaikwad, “We have sent letters to the unions informing rickshaw drivers that the have time till October 15 to get the bars installed.” Passengers blindly alight and board the vehicles from both sides, and the number of people being knocked over from vehicles which are behind the rickshaw is on the rise, he pointed out. But passengers say the `purpose’ of the sharing system is grossly defeated with the bars.

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M Vaidya, a resident of Sindhigate, said, “If the destination of the person sitting on the extreme right is before that of the other passengers, everyone will have to alight so that he or she can get off.” Added Srilatha Narayan, "In any case, we have to sit in crammed rickshaws with great difficulty, and the bars will only encroach on sitting space.”

Gaikwad asserted that drivers who did not comply would be fined. Concurred chairperson of the Rickshaw ChalakMalak Sena, Prakash Penkar, “We cannot oppose the drive as what the police are doing is in tune with the law.”Enterprising rickshawwallahs have, however, devised ways to wriggle out: Some vehicles screw on a bar which resembles the real thing when checking is on. One driver this reporter chanced upon attached the bar to a spring contraption, so that passengers could alight from the right in side spite of it, and the bar bounced back into place immediately after.

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