As Delhi gears up for its odd-even transport experiment from January 1, companies are still at sixes and sevens on how their employees will commute to work. Many are getting into Christmas break right now and reopen only on January 4 so have had no time to make arrangements, and left it to their employees to work it out.
“It’s an illogical move, so it’s difficult for us to come up with a logical plan to cope with it,” said a Gurgaon-based corporate. Most BPOs and large firms said they already have private cab services in place that pick up employees from home or shuttles from metro stations, which would be adequate.
Shirin Gupta, marketing manager at Delhi-based start-up TrulyMadly, says, “Some of our employees are already carpooling. With the odd-even rule, we expect more employees to carpool.”
However, as Monica Jasuja, who commutes 28 km daily from her South Delhi home to her Gurgaon office, points out she feels trapped by the ruling, as she has not managed to locate a carpool yet, despite logging into sites such as odd-even.com that is trying to link up commuters. She depends a lot on cab aggregators such as Ola and Uber for her journey and fears that prices will surge during the 15 days when demand soars. Although women drivers are exempt, Jasuja says she prefers not to drive herself as her commute is 1.5 hours long and she likes to use the journey time productively by working.
Meanwhile, some Resident Welfare Associations have been proactive. At Vasant Kunj, for instance, one of the RWAs has started maintaining a register at the main gate for residents who would like to car pool, inviting them to write details such as their destination, morning /evening commute timings and so on.