A new spoke in the urban transport wheel

Sarthis, battery-operated vehicles that can seat seven, have been declared illegal by the Delhi government but are common in the city

They whoosh by you suddenly. Though the roads here are not quite over-run by these, they are all over the place - battery-operated vehicles that can seat seven. The vehicles, unofficially called Sarthis, are imported from China and run illegally here. They typify the tale of public transport in India - a regulatory mess of which new vehicle categories such as quadricycles would now be a part.

"The made-in-China vehicle is cheap. That's why it is doing well," says Gaurav Garg, who says he knows seven others importing these vehicles into India. "These days, even a cigarette lighter is made in China; so, why not this?"

The owner of a Sarthi rickshaw and auto stand, M R Agarwal, who has been in this business for 50 years, berates a notice from the Delhi government declaring the vehicles illegal. "Money has changed hands," he says, sitting cross-legged on a cot, surrounded by at least a dozen Sarthi vehicles. He summons one of his drivers, Mukesh, who walks up to him with a pronounced limp. "He is from Bihar and is handicapped. Agar yeh chaar paise kama leta hai, to sarkar ka kya jata hai (Why should the government not allow him to earn a few rupees)?"

The on-road price of a Sarthi is Rs 90,000. It needs 3.5 units of electricity a day and runs 80 km on a single charge. A driver such as Mukesh earns Rs 500 a day, of which he pays half to the owner as rent for the vehicle.

Below the radar
The battery-operated vehicles have quietly joined the urban pool of slow-moving transport, primarily comprising auto-rickshaws and cycle-rickshaws. Most remain below the radar of the city's bureaucracy.

These vehicles divide experts on their usability.

"Our cities' traffic needs to slow. In cities all over the world, that is the answer to improve safety," says Madhav Pai, who runs Mumbai-based Embarq India, one of the few entities working on urban transport.

Pai wants low-speed urban transport to stop being below the radar. A study by Embarq on auto-rickshaws in Mumbai found 60 per cent of commuters used suburban trains; of these, nine per cent used auto rickshaws to commute to stations. As reasons behind using auto rickshaws, these people cited safety and access to places where buses didn't ply.

However, many disagree with the concept of multiple vehicle types. "A multiplicity of vehicle types on the road is unsafe, as it slows traffic," says Harvinder Singh Kalra, who runs a fleet of buses as part of Delhi's public transport. "When you are late, you speed, and accidents happen."

It is clear, and both Agarwal and Garg admit it, that the battery-operated vehicles haven't undergone any on-road safety test. This, says an official of the Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System (a joint venture between the Delhi government and IDFC Foundation), is a worrying factor.

This, however, doesn't take away from the fact that Sarthis are providing a solution to the need for a relatively easy taxi service, a space Bajaj's quadricycle hopes to occupy after its debut. The quadricycle has secured the government's nod to run as an intra-city commercial vehicle. Its on-road cost is likely to be Rs 1.5 lakh, excluding the cost of state permits.

Agarwal and Garg haven't heard of the quadricycle. They feel it might not be able to beat their battery-operated vehicle in terms of on-road cost. However, "political backing" for the Sarthi would do a world of good, they say.

Multiple authorities
A reason why several forms of public transport go unnoticed is because in India, urban transport is a governance quagmire. An official of the ministry of heavy industries looks at specifications of cars, while the ministry of road transport and highways is concerned with building highways. This ministry, also responsible for implementing the Motor Vehicles Act (which governs the registration, licensing and movement of vehicles across states), approves new vehicle types such as the quadricycle.

Various states implement the Vehicles Act through road transport organisations, or RTOs. If Sarthis are deemed illegal, it takes a Delhi government notice to declare these as such.

No agency monitors the number of vehicles on a city's roads. Estimates on the number of vehicles, or even vehicle types, are tough to unearth. A typical big city road has large trucks (from 9 pm to 9 am everyday), small trucks, buses, cars, three-wheelers or auto rickshaws, and two-wheelers. Non-motorised vehicles include cycle-rickshaws, bicycles and, of course, the new battery-operated vehicles.

A survey by government-run consultancy RITES (on 2007 data), projected the number of daily car trips in Delhi to rise 65 per cent to 29,83,299 by 2021. Public transport trips, it estimated, would increase only 40 per cent - a worrying factor, as cities seek to rely more on public transport.