TURBLOG D3.9MumbaiFV

Grant Agreement n.SCS8-GA-2009-234061 Coordination and support action (Coordinating) FP7-TRANSPORT SST.2008.3.1.4.
Urban delivery systems Project acronym: TURBLOG_WW Project title: Transferability of urban logistics concepts and practices from a worldwide perspective
Deliverable 3.9
Urban logistics practices Mumbai Case Study
Due date of deliverable: 28th February 2011 Submission date: 10th March 2011
Start date of project: October 2009
Duration: 24months
NEA Transport research and training Version 1.0 Project co-funded by the European Commission within the Seventh Framework Programme Dissemination Level PU PP RE CO Public Restricted to other programme participants (including the Commission Services) Restricted to a group specified by the consortium (including the Commission Services) Confidential, only for members of the consortium (including the Commission Services) X
Foreword
The TURBLOG Deliverable 3.9 was produced by Deepak Baindur, from the Centre for Infrastructure Sustainable Transportation & Urban Planning, Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India.
The review of the document was made by: Nathaly Dasburg-Tromp (NEA) Rosrio Macrio, TIS.PT Maria Rodrigues, TIS.PT Ana Gama, TIS.PT
This document is set to be Restricted to a group specified by the consortium (RE), and should be referenced as:
TURBLOG (2011) Transferability of urban logistics concepts and practices from a world wide perspective - Deliverable 3.9 - Urban logistics practices Mumbai Case study
QUALITY CONTROL INFORMATION: Version 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 Final 1.0 Date 31/08/2010 24/09/2010 12/10/2010 30/11/2011 03/03/2011 10/03/2011 Description TURBLOG D3.9 Draft version TURBLOG D3.9 Final version to be revised TURBLOG D3.9 Final version after revision TURBLOG D3.9 Final version for quality control TURBLOG D3.9 Final version after quality control Submission of TURBLOG D3.9 final version to the EC
TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ...................................................................................... 1 1 Introduction ............................................................................................ 3 1.1 1.2 1.3 2 Objective of the report ....................................................................... 3 Scope and methodology ....................................................................... 4 Report structure ................................................................................ 5
Overview of india and the city of mumbai ....................................................... 7 2.1 Mumbai city in the macro context .......................................................... 7 Country profile .......................................................................... 7
2.1.1
1.1.1.................................................................................................... 16 2.2 2.3 3 Urban freight in Mumbai ..................................................................... 17 Urban transport problems in City of Mumbai ............................................. 28
Institutional framework and current transport and logistics policies ...................... 33 3.1 3.1.1 3.1.2 3.2 3.2.1 3.2.2 National level .................................................................................. 33 Institucional Framework At The National Level ...................................... 33 National Urban Transport Policy......................................................... 35 Urban level (Mumbai City level) ............................................................ 38 Institutional framework at the urban level of Mumbai City ........................ 38 Mumbais Urban Transport Policy ....................................................... 41
Measures used in Mumbai City ..................................................................... 43 4.1 4.2 Introduction .................................................................................... 43 Measures used in Mumbai City .............................................................. 43
Selected good practice ............................................................................. 47 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 Introduction .................................................................................... 47 The Dabbawalas of Mumbai ................................................................. 48 Stakeholders ................................................................................... 52 Product and/or Service involved ........................................................... 55 iii
5.5 5.6 5.7 6
Financial aspects .............................................................................. 56 Transferability potential of the selected good practice ............................... 57 Other aspects .................................................................................. 60
Evaluation of the good practice ................................................................... 62 6.1 6.2 6.3 Introduction .................................................................................... 62 Specific urban freight data collected...................................................... 62 Impacts .......................................................................................... 63
6.3.1 Transport impacts ........................................................................... 63 6.3.2 Economic impacts ........................................................................... 64 6.3.3 Environmental impacts .................................................................... 65 6.3.4 Social impacts ................................................................................ 66 6.4 Implementation of measures ................................................................ 68
6.4.1 Specific changes needed to implement measures ................................... 68 6.4.2 Integration aspects ......................................................................... 69 6.4.3 Acceptability ................................................................................. 69 6.4.4 Bottlenecks/barriers ........................................................................ 70 6.4.5 Success and failure factors................................................................ 71 7 8 Conclusions............................................................................................ 73 References ............................................................................................ 76
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INDEX OF TABLES
Table 1: Types of permits issued for plying goods transport vehicles ........................... 14 Table 2: Octroi Rates in different districts in Maharashtra state ................................. 15 Table 3: Urban freight indicators by impact category .............................................. 16 Table 4: Finding from traffic count at different Mumbai road junctions in Jan 2009 (Rush Hour period) .......................................................................................... 24 Table 5: Daily fatalities in accidents in Mumbai Metropolitan Region ........................... 30 Table 6: Transport sector - involvement of State and private sector ............................ 34 Table 7: Indian Auto fuel policy 2001 .................................................................. 37 Table 8: Proposed time frame for introducing cleaner vehicles .................................. 37 Table 9: Governmental Organisations involved in urban transport in Mumbai ................. 38 Table 10: Stakeholders directly involved in the Mumbai dabbawala logistics system ........ 53
INDEX OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Structure of the Report ....................................................................... 6 Figure 2: Map of Asia ...................................................................................... 7 Figure 3: Country Map of India ........................................................................... 8 Figure 4: Urban freight system approach. ............................................................ 12 Figure 5: Location of Mumbai in India ................................................................. 18 Figure 6: Greater Mumbai Metropolitan Region Map ................................................ 19 Figure 7: Spatial structure and commercial areas in the Mumbai city ........................... 23 Figure 8: Mumbai suburban Railway Network ........................................................ 26 Figure 9: Coding system framework used by the Dabbawalas ..................................... 51 Figure 10: Dabbawala logistics activity chart: home to work ..................................... 52 Figure 11: Scarcity/Density of Origins/Destinations affects the choice of delivery organization........................................................................................... 58
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LIST OF ACRONYMS
BEST BPO CBD CDP CO CO2 GoI Govt. HC HGV HR IT kg Km Kmph MMRDA NOx PM Rs. RTO SEZ Sms SOx SRTU T-km VVIP Bruhanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport Undertaking under the Brihanmumbai Mahanagar Palika (Mumbai Municipal Corporation) Business Process Outsourcing Central Business District City Development Plan Carbon Monoxide Carbon Dioxide Government of India Government Hydro Carbon compounds Heavy Goods Vehicle Human Resource Information Technology Kilograms Kilometers Kilometres per hour Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority Nitrogen Oxide compounds Particulate Matter Indian Rupees (Indian Currency) Exchange rate of 1 ~ Rs. 58 Regional Transport Office Special Economic Zone in India Short Message Service Sulphur Oxide compounds State Road Transport Undertaking (India) Tonne - kilometres Very Very Important Person
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The overall objective of the TURBLOG project is to compare urban logistics practices of selected case studies in different cities in the world and analyse the potential transferability of the selected good practices to other cities in the world. The present report analyses the selected good practice from India. The Mumbai Dabbawala or tiffin carrier operation has been selected as a best practice, as it is widely recognised as an outstanding example of six sigma implementation in the Indian context. This is a meal delivery system in the sprawling megapolis of Mumbai, where many workers and employees prefer home-cooked meals for lunch. This is currently a highly efficient and low cost delivery solution, which has astounded logistics professionals all over the world. The main objective of the report is to analyse the business model of the Mumbai dabbawala best practice and to evaluate the potential transferability of the best practices to urban logistics processes in other cities across the world. Before focussing on the Mumbai Dabbawala case study, basic information of India and the city of Mumbai is presented along with the institutional governance framework, transport policies, existing transport related problems and measures undertaken to mitigate the existing problems. This provides a better perspective of the environment in which the dabbawalas are operating, but also allows visualising the essentials of the system and its potential for replication in other cities. The case study demonstrates that the informal sector is also capable to develop a best practice in the urban freight logistics. It shows how urban public transport system can be exploited for urban freight movements in cities where cheap, regular and reliable public transport services are available. The main findings of the evaluation of this case study is that the dabbawala system has demonstrated how a highly efficient and low cost delivery solution can be developed with a positive impact on city, citizens and companies by suitably combining factors of inexpensive manpower availability, perpetual demand, urban transport infrastructure, unique traffic flow pattern and intuition based management practices. Potential transferability factors identified in this case study are summarised as follows: Utilisation of urban public transport system for freight movements provided they have a good network and services are cheap, reliable and regular; Adaptation of business processes considering the skill sets and abilities of the companys employees;
Customer focus and continuous innovation to keep the urban logistics services attractive to its core customer base.
The Mumbai dabbawala service essentially delivers a homogeneous product flow system with high demand in a city that has a linear topography, congested road network and cheap, regular and reliable public transport system. This business model may not be easily replicated for non-homogenous product flows and in cities without the similar characteristics. Even so, the potential transferability factors from this case study are the effective organisational structure of the dabbawala system and strong ethics and value system that continuously motivate its members to excel in their business of delivering tiffin boxes.
1 INTRODUCTION
The subject of city logistics or urban freight transport deals with the activities of delivering and collecting goods in town and city centres. The activities include a number of intermediate processes such as transportation, goods handling, storage, inventory management, home delivery services, return of goods and waste. Although many of the processes are done outside city limits, they can be studied in its entirety of supply chains that transgress all geographical borders (Stantchev & Whiteing 2006). A characteristic of urban freight transport is the small loads and frequent trips result in the increase of transport intensity or the traffic density. This chapter identifies the main objectives of Deliverable 3 of the TURBLOG project which is primarily focused on a best practice in urban logistics from India. Further the scope of the report and methodology used to analyse the Indian best practise case study is discussed. This chapter concludes with the presentation of the structure of the report.
1.1 OBJECTIVE OF THE REPORT

One of the goals of the TURBLOG project is to present more detailed information on specific urban logistics practices in different cities of the world, with the final objective to analyse the potential transferability of the selected good practices to other cities in the world. This report is one of the 9 in-depth case studies on urban logistics that are studied in different parts of the world as part of the TURBLOG project. The main objectives of this Report are as follows: to analyse the business model of the Mumbai Dabbawalas or in other words the lunch box delivery system in the city of Mumbai, India; to explore the potential transferability of the selected good practice to other cities in the world and identify limitations in its replication to other contexts. The main purpose of this report is to present the operational details of the dabbawala service and explore the main features that have contributed to the sustained success of this service in Mumbai, in spite of challenges that come with changing times.
1.2 SCOPE AND METHODOLOGY

Deliverable 3 analyses an urban logistics best practice in the city of Mumbai, India. The selected good practice is the business model of the Mumbai dabbawalas or in other words the lunch box delivery system in the city of Mumbai. The city of Mumbai was selected for the case study, because it is the commercial capital of India and a very cosmopolitan megapolis housing urban people with diverse and deep rooted traditions, culture, values and food habits coexist (Mahias M.C. 1999). The tiffin suppliers (also referred to as dabbawalas in this report) deliver daily home-cooked lunches to thousands of workers and employees in Mumbai, India. The service has been recognised as a best practice model of urban logistics management and entrepreneurship, which cannot be seen anywhere else in the world in terms of size and scope of operations (Balakrishnan & Teo 2004). This organisation has a number of unique features that have contributed to their sustained success and growth which could offer lessons for other logistics companies over the world: It is one of the oldest surviving pre-Independence urban logistics systems in the city of Mumbai and probably in the world. The dabbawala services were begun in 1890 by a group of people with same ethnic background (from Pune) to support their livelihood in India (Ravichandran 2005). The system has been operational for about 120 years without interruption. As of 2005, the services handled more than 300,000 transactions a day (150,000 boxes), employed 5,000 people and earned Rs. 360 million every year (Ravichandran 2005); The Mumbai dabbawala business model was conceived, developed and perfected by a group of people who had migrated from rural areas in search of jobs. They had little or no formal education in the area of logistics. The system has continuously evolved since its inception and has stayed attractive to a particular market segment over time (Pandit 2007); The dabbawala service maintains an impeccable record of punctual and reliable services on all working days of the year. The service not only provides clean home cooked food, but also delivers it safely against theft and damage (Percot 2005). There is no disruption of services as long as the Mumbai suburban rail service network is functional. The services reported less than six errors in 13 million transactions, which have earned them recognition as an urban logistics service best practice in India; The delivery system is organised as a co-operative movement whose basic entity is the dabbawala. The relatively flat 3 tiered organisational structure symbolises equality and fairness. The 3 tier system allows them to be readily scalable to adapt to
demand ensuring optimal resource deployment. This structure allows the organisation to carry out centralised planning and decentralised execution of business services; A unique motivating factor to improve and sustain performance levels is driven by ethical considerations rather than personal wellbeing. The system is built on pride to deliver food to their customers and thus as a means of service to humanity. The members do not consider themselves as logistics providers. Mutual respect for each other and empowerment are reinforcing features; This occupation belonging to the informal sector is interesting because of its special relationship to the customised food habits of Indians, but also specific to Mumbais geography. For this case study, urban freight implies the movement of lunch boxes (or tiffin boxes) carried by suppliers (dabbawalas) where a major part of the door to door delivery system is done using Mumbais public transport system, namely the suburban commuter rail. Since the commuter rail is a major mode of transport for the case study, the report focuses on public transport system and specifically, Mumbais suburban commuter rail infrastructure and services. The business model and the measures employed in this case study are already implemented for many decades i.e. not measures out of simulation or theoretic models. Through the case study of the Dabbawalas, this report will identify best practices in the following types of measures in the city of Mumbai: Emerging actualised concepts as to how freight distribution and collection can be integrated with urban public rail transport systems that is otherwise primarily used for passenger movements; Business arrangements: focussing on private associations and self regulation within a monopolistic service in the food distribution market.
1.3 REPORT STRUCTURE

The structure of the document is shown in Figure 1. Chapter 2 provides an overview of India and the city of Mumbai in the macro context. Specifically, the citys transport infrastructure system, public transport services and existing transport problems in the city of Mumbai are reviewed. Chapter 3 highlights the institutional framework and current urban transport policies of India and particularly in the city of Mumbai. In Chapter 4, the current measures used in the city of Mumbai are reviewed. This chapter also describes several planned transport infrastructure projects in Mumbai. The policy measures (mainly involving addition of
transport capacity) to fulfil the stated objectives of the policy documents are reviewed. This chapter concludes with a brief description and status of the transport infrastructure projects planned or underway in Mumbai.
Figure 1: Structure of the Report
Chapter 5 explores the case study of the dabbawalas in detail. Here, the Mumbai dabbawala business model is analysed. In doing so, the contribution of the stakeholders, services involved and financial aspects are discussed in detail. The purpose is to identify which aspects are the keys to the success of this business model and which can be transferable to freight logistics practices in other urban goods distribution systems and geographical regions/cities. Chapter 6 evaluates the dabbawala service system from different perspectives in terms of its social and business impact to the citys transport system, economy and environment. Further, this chapter explores whether specific changes are necessary at urban policy level to replicate this best practice in other cities in the world. In this analysis, transferability is explored from aspects of integration, acceptability, bottlenecks and success/failure factors. Finally, Chapter 7 concludes with an overview of the report and key research findings.
2 OVERVIEW OF INDIA AND THE CITY OF MUMBAI

2.1 MUMBAI CITY IN THE MACRO CONTEXT
2.1.1 Country profile
The Republic of India is a country in South Asia (See Figure 2). Mainland India is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal on the east. It is the seventh largest country in the world with a geographical area of 3.28 million km2. India has a land frontier of around 15,200 km and a sea coast length stretching 7,517 km of which 5,423 km belong to the Indian peninsula and 2,094 km to Andaman, Nicobar and Lakshadweep islands (Kumar, Pathak, Pednekar, Raju, & Gowthaman, 2006).
Figure 2: Map of Asia1
http://www.justmaps.org/maps/asia/ Retrieved 17 August 2010
India is a federal constitutional republic with a parliamentary democracy consisting of 28 states and 7 union territories (See Figure 3). Indian society is pluralistic, multilingual and multiethnic and is home to diverse wildlife and protected habitats.
Figure 3: Country Map of India2
India is the second most populous country and the most populous democracy in the world with an estimated 1,173 million inhabitants (estimate for July 2010).3
2
http://www.mapsofindia.com/ Retrieved on 17 August 2010
India occupies 2.4% of the worlds land area and supports over 17.5% of the worlds population. Indias urban population increased 11 fold during the twentieth century and is increasingly concentrated in large cities4. By 2001, 35 million plus cities existed in India, with the largest cities namely Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata having a population of more than 10 million each. The 2001 Census data showed that around 70% of Indias population resided in rural areas while around 30% resided in cities in India5. There is a large variation in population density across India. According to the 2001 Census Report, the average Indian population density was 324 persons per km2. It varies from 13 persons per km2 in Arunachal Pradesh to 9,294 in Delhi. Among the States, West Bengal is the most thickly populated with a population density of 904 persons per km2. Following strong economic reforms from the socialist inspired economy of a postindependence Indian nation, free market activities were initiated in 1990 for international competition and foreign investment. As a result, India began to develop a fast-paced economic growth rate averaging 8-10% per annum. By 2008, India had established as the second fastest growing major economy6. According to the IMF, the Indian economy is the eleventh largest economy in the world by nominal GDP and has the fourth largest purchasing power parity in April 20107. Indias per capita income (nominal) in 2009 was $1,031 and ranked 139th in the world, while per capita (Purchasing Power Parity) of 2,941 is ranked 128th8. India is regarded as an emerging economic power as it is endowed with a very large pool of human and natural resources, coupled with a growing large pool of English speaking skilled professionals. India was primarily an agro-based economy until the early 1990s. Indian trade underwent massive restructuring following the 1991 liberalization policies. Ever since, Indian exports
3 4 5
Source: The World Factbook (www.cia.gov) http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/profiles/India.pdf Retrieved 17 August 2010
http://www.censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/India_at_glance/glance.aspx Retrieved 17 August 2010 http://www.australiannews.net/story/366072 Retrieved 17 August 2010
6 7
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2010/01/weodata/weorept.aspx?sy=2007&ey=2010&scsm= 1&ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.&br=1&c=534&s=NGDPD,NGDPDPC,PPPGDP,PPPPC,LP&grp=0&a=&pr.x=81&pr .y=8 Retrieved 17 August 2010

8
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/SOUTHASIAEXT/Resources/DPR_FullReport.pdf August 2010
Retrieved
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have experienced a growth rate of 18% per annum, while the import sector has experienced a growth rate of 34%9. The main exports of India are engineering goods, iron and steel, jewellery and gems, textiles, chemicals and agro products. In 2009, United Arab Emirates was the major importer of Indian products attracting around 12% of all Indian exports. This was followed by United States of America (US) attracting 11.7%, China 5.3% and Singapore 4.5%. Agriculture constitutes Indias largest economic sector and significantly contributes to the socio-economic development of the country. Agriculture along with allied sectors like forestry, logging and fishing accounted for 17% of GDP in 2009 employing 52% of the total workforce. India is the largest producer in the world of milk, cashew nuts, coconuts, tea, ginger, turmeric, fruit and black pepper. It is also the second largest producer of wheat, rice, sugar, cotton, silk, peanuts and inland fish. It is the third largest producer of tobacco. Indian manufacturing industry accounts for 28% of the GDP and employs 14% of the total workforce of which almost a third of the industrial labour force is engaged in simple household manufacturing only. Textile manufacturing is the second largest source of employment after agriculture and accounts for 26% of manufacturing output. Indian service sector has the largest share in GDP accounting for 55% in 2007 and has grown at a fast rate of 7.5% providing employment for around 23% of the workforce. The share of business services (IT, IT enabled services and BPOs) to the nations GDP increased from 4.8% to 7% from 2005-06 to 2008. Organized retail supermarkets account for 24% of the total urban consumer market as of 2008. The main imports to India are crude oil and machinery. Other imported commodities are precious stones, fertilizers, iron and steel, gold and silver, consumer electronics, chemicals, coal and transport equipment. In 2009, India ranked 15th in the world in terms of import volume. Indias main import partners are China (11%), Saudi Arabia (6.9%), USA & UAE (6.7%) and Iran (4.2%)9. In the last 20 years, the inter-regional transport growth by weight in all modes has grown over eight times in absolute terms from 283 million tonnes to 2,387 million tonnes from (19782008), the bulk of the growth has been after early 1990s period which coincides with the liberalization of the Indian economy. In 2007-08, the modal shares for inter-regional freight transport in India was dominated by road at 50% in transport volumes expressed in tonne-km. Indian Railways had 36% and coastal
9
http://www.economywatch.com/indianeconomy/export-import.html Retrieved 17 August 2010
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shipping occupied 6% of total transport output and the rest was by air and inland waterways. The total transport output in terms of tonne-kilometres has grown exponentially in the past 3 decades from 188.9 billion t-km (1978-79) to 1,300 t-km (2007-08) which is nearly 7 times in absolute terms (Singh et al. 2008). The average lead distances moved by a unit tonne of cargo indicated that road transport was popular for relatively short distances (up to 453 km), rail transport for middle distances haulage of up to 661 km and shipping and airways for distances greater than 1,000 km (Singh et al. 2008). Indias inhabitants speak a diverse array of languages (16 official languages as well as innumerable local dialects) and businesses are geographically scattered around twenty eight states and seven union territories. Therefore it is difficult to make sweeping generalization of business culture in India. Even so, there are certain factors universally applicable when carrying out business in India. In India, inter-personal relationships are placed before business interests and therefore considered most important. Secondly, society and businesses are hierarchically structured where one strong individual will issue direct instructions down the chain of command. Employees have allotted positions and decision making power. Decisions from the top are usually followed unquestioningly. Because of this cultural characteristic, many Indians find it extremely difficult to work in a non-hierarchical business structure as is in the West. Therefore doing business in India necessitates the liaison as near to the top of the hierarchy as possible to have an impact on the business decision making10. English is one of the fifteen official languages in India and is universally spoken by the educated sections of society. As with many Asian cultures, it is difficult for Indians to say no as it is considered offensive and leads to difficulty in continuing relationships. Disagreements are communicated by vagueness and lack of commitment.
2.1.2
Urban freight data collection in the country
The availability of statistical data about urban goods movements in Indian cities is almost non-existent, when compared to the situation in general traffic and in passenger transport, where the data basis is relatively better than in the urban freight domain. Unlike in developed countries, comprehensive time series urban freight data (by weight, distance, volume, cost and revenues) in India is not known to be carried out to authors knowledge. According to the Planning Commission Committee Report for XI 5 year plan, there is not yet
10
http://www.worldbusinessculture.com/Business-in-India.html Retrieved 17 August 2010
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an institutionalised collection of freight transport data in any of the urban or inter-urban transport flows.
Figure 4: Urban freight system approach. Source: BESTUFS II (Schoemaker et al. 2006)
Urban freight transport data is used by different stakeholders within the urban environment. BESTUF II project (Schoemaker et al. 2006) identified the main stakeholders requiring freight transport data to be city authorities, shippers, receivers, transport operators and vehicle manufacturers. Each stakeholder has specific viewpoints, objectives, expectations and requirements for collecting urban freight transport data (Huschebeck 2001). Figure 4 shows the complexity of city logistics and their different influencing factors. The Municipalities require data to manage the urban transport system better. This means ensuring that urban goods transport and supply are carried out optimally, or in other words, minimising both the operational costs of transport and negative external costs to society (Schoemaker et al. 2006). Municipalities require information on traffic and transport such as the number of trucks of a special size registered in a city or region or transport amounts (in tonnes) of single business fields. The former data can be obtained easily without much financial effort and its use is rather limited for urban freight transport planning. But transport
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amounts are difficult to collect partly due to the difficulty in collection and partly because transport companies are reluctant to share the data for reasons of confidentiality (Schoemaker et al. 2006). On the other hand, transport industry requires data to ensure cost efficiency for operations, more transparency in access-restrictions and harmonisation of restrictions throughout the city. The acquisition of reliable statistical data and performance of periodic updating is necessary in order to obtain information about special situations or for the robust evaluation of policy measures implemented (Stantchev & Whiteing 2006). Having such evaluation results will be useful for the planning, implementation and assessment of measures in urban goods transport in Indian cities. A comparison of planning and organisation of goods transport and city logistics is extremely difficult in the present circumstances because of two critical factors goods transport data in India is non-existent and because of the lack of systematic and nonexistent standard data collection methodologies and institutions (Sriraman et al. 2006). Information such as the number of trips by each vehicle in the transport company, vehicle occupancy factors, sizes of vehicles in different fleets, goods transports via different transport modes, use of road space by trucks and lorries and much more information is usually missing in typical surveys carried out in many cities abroad (Sriraman et al. 2006). To develop realistic urban freight transport models, data on transport chains, number of tours and number of stops and origin-destination matrices related to transport weights, consignment sizes, vehicle types, etc. is essential and this is not available from statistical survey data (Huschebeck 2001). The main sources for data collection in India for urban freight movements are Permit System, Vehicle Registrations and Octroi charges (Sriraman et al. 2006).
Permit system: Permits are issued by the State Transport Authorities to operators for intra-State and National permits. Presently the method of data collection on goods transport is done by means of permits and licences issued to vehicles and operators as well as the revenues collected by the Regional Transport Offices under the Motor Vehicles Act, 198811. This is the Central Act applicable throughout the country. For goods carriage, Table 1 shows the different types of permits issued.
11
http://www.cyberabadpolice.gov.in/Acts%20and%20Laws/MV%20ACT.pdf Retrieved on 30 August 2010
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Table 1: Types of permits issued for plying goods transport vehicles12 Type of Permit Class of vehicles to which permit applies Goods trucks, delivery vans, trailers, etc. All kinds of transport vehicles Description
Goods carriers
Transportation of goods within Maharashtra State for hire or reward Use of transport vehicles on special occasions like fairs, religious gatherings, seasonal business, to meet a particular temporary need and in case of pending decisions on renewal of permit Transportation of goods all over India
Temporary Permit
National permit of goods vehicles
Goods truck with sleeping berth to spare driver
However the database relating to these permits is not updated on a systematic basis, as a result one is unable to know the exact number of permits issued. Under the National permit scheme, each truck had to pay Rs.20,000 annually to obtain a National permit (TOI 2010). The fee allowed the truck operator, access to its home state where it was registered and three neighbouring states. For each additional state, the truck operator had to pay an additional Rs. 5,000. Under the new regulation a unified national permit is effective from May 1, 2010, which will be implemented in 2011 (TOI 2010). The new permit system aims to give a further impetus to the goods and services tax with the objective to create a seamless pan-Indian market. According to the new regulation, each commercial goods vehicle will need to register for the national permit at the Regional Transport Office (RTO) and pay the national permit fee of Rs. 15,000 per truck per annum to the State Road Transport Undertaking, a NGO at the Centre. Each state will receive its share of revenue based on the average of the last 3 years collection. The National permit is expected to save costs of up to Rs. 10,000 annually per truck, reduce operation hurdles and time for both commercial vehicles and the State Administration. Shippers and forwarders will not be too affected by the new unified national permit as the permit fee contributes to less than 2% of the total operating cost.
12
http://maharashtra.gov.in/english/homedept/transport/permit.html Retrieved on 13 August 2010
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Vehicle Registrations: Another source of data is the number of vehicles registered by the Regional Transport Offices in each State. Registration is done on basis of vehicle category (Sriraman et al. 2006). Assuming an average loading capacity per vehicle type, the total capacity available for goods carriage can be estimated. However, this data does not give the break up relating to composition of fleet. Registered numbers often include vehicles which have been deregistered.
Octroi Charges: Octroi is a local tax collected on various articles brought into a district for consumption. It is paid by heavy vehicles carrying goods at the octroi posts which are set on the ends of the city. Revenues collected from octroi charges for goods entering a district is another source of data collection. The octroi is collected based on the value of goods coming into the district by road or rail transport modes. Octroi constitutes a major source of revenue for Municipalities and figure shows the octroi rates collected in the state of Maharashtra. Table 2: Octroi Rates in different districts in Maharashtra state13 SI 1 2 3 4 Place Mumbai Thane Octroi Rate (%) 4.5% 4% Octroi processing charges 0.25% 0.25% 0.25% 0.25% 0.25% Total 4.75% 4.25% 4.25% 3.25% 3.25%
Kalyan & Dombivali 4%

Nasik Pune 3% 3%
There exists scarce urban freight transport data for the city of Mumbai. Given that the freight transport industry has never been in the public domain and fully deregulated, collection of freight transport data has always been a problem. A number of Working Committees set up by the Indian Government have emphasised the need to develop systematic database. Very often, Working Committees appointed from time to time have commissioned studies for the purpose of their work and each Committee looks at specific issues which required specific data to be generated (Sriraman et al. 2006). As a result, no systematic time series data is available even now.
13
http://www.frizair.com/pdf/octroi_list.pdf Retrieved on 15 August 2010
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Table 3 enlists critical urban freight indicators for freight transport planning and policy purposes and highlights the severe gap in existing data collection in the Indian context. As seen in the table below, data on the number of registered freight vehicles, number of transport companies, urban freight flows and safety related data is collected for Indian cities.
Table 3: Urban freight indicators by impact category Impact category Freight volumes and commodities in urban areas Indicator category Transport demand Logistics Indicator Population Volumes transported into urban areas Goods receivers Logistics costs Share of urban transport costs compared to total supply chain Salaries in urban freight transport Population density and share of population in urbanized areas Household size Number of vehicles according to GVW and age Proportion of goods vehicles in total traffic Ownership of vehicles Vehicles operating in cities Number of vehicles entering cities Distribution of freight vehicles movements over day Service visits Waste collection Freight vehicles kilometres Use of load capacity Combined shipments Delivery days and times Regularity of trips Origin of delivery trips Number of stops per tour, per day Trip length Distance between stops Trip times Travel time to and within city centre Deliveries at premises Dwelling time in urban area/loading and unloading times Collected in India (Yes / No) No No No No No No No No Yes Yes No No Yes No
Urban freight transport fleet
Freight vehicles
Urban flow
traffic
Service visits and waste collections Performance Urban Deliveries General delivery characteristics (operator)
No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No
General delivery characteristics (receivers)
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Impact category
Indicator category Home delivery
Indicator Home delivery services offered by shops Number of km covered by inhabitant Number of jobs in transport Number of transport related companies Typical fuel consumption by vehicle type Energy consumption in urban freight transport Consumption of non- renewable fuel resources Typical emission factors by vehicle type Share of urban freight in exhaust emissions Noise levels driving truck Noise levels loading/unloading truck
Collected in India (Yes / No) No No No Yes No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes No No No No
Contribution economy Environment
to
Employment % in transport and logistics Energy use
Exhaust emissions
Noise
Safety
Accidents and casualties in urban freight transport
Number of accidents Number of fatalities Involvement of freight vehicles in accidents Weekly distribution of accidents involving HGVs Road user type Cyclists Pedestrians Car drivers Source: Adapted from (Huschebeck 2001)
2.2 URBAN FREIGHT IN MUMBAI

Mumbai or formerly Bombay is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra (See Figure 5). Mumbai lies on the west coast of India and has a deep natural harbor. Mumbai lies in the mouth of the Ulhas river. The coastal region of Maharashtra state in which Mumbai is a part known as the Konkan region (Dwivedi & Mehrotra, 2001). Mumbai is geographically located on the Salsette island which is surrounded by the Arabian sea.
17
Figure 5: Location of Mumbai in India14
The Mumbai region as a whole is a low land lying on the west of Sayhadri hill ranges. Many parts of the city lie just above sea level with average elevation of 14m. The Mumbai region has a varied landscape marked by a series of north-south hill ridges in central and eastern part which is characteristic of the Deccan lava formed by successive layers of basalt flows. Mumbai has a peculiar geography - a narrow wedge shaped land surrounded by water on 3 sides which has for decades, dictated spatial growth which is mainly linear along the NorthSouth axis. Mumbai has 6 major lakes with numerous tributaries flowing towards the Arabian Sea that provide important sources for water for the region. Three small rivers Dahisar, Poisar and
14
http://www.urban-age.net/10_cities/_data/_FIC/FIC_MBI.html Retrieved 11 August 2010
18
Oshiwara originate within the Sanjay Gandhi National Park. The Mithi river passes through the Mumbai and originates from Tulsi Lake, gathering waters overflowing from Vihar and Powai lakes. The rivers and lakes are only used for agricultural and industrial purposes. The citys coastline has numerous creeks and bays from Thane creek on the east to Madhav Marve on the western front. The region has a 167 km coastline of which a vast area is occupied by wetlands and mangroves.
Figure 6: Greater Mumbai Metropolitan Region Map15
After Indias independence in 1947, Mumbais spatial growth took place in the south near the Mumbai Port. Gradually it spread northwards along the suburban rail corridors. Until 1968, most of the Regions urban growth was confined to Greater Mumbai municipal limits. The urban sprawl study indicates that after 1968, urban sprawl took place along Kalyan, MiraBhayander, Navi Mumbai and Vasai areas by conversion of agricultural land and reclamation of wetlands (Phatak, Pendharkar, & Patkar, 1999). Figure 6 shows the area of Greater Mumbai
15
http://www.mmrdamumbai.org/ Retrieved on 12 August 2010
19
Metropolitan Region. Despite rapid urban sprawl in recent times, 42% of the Greater Mumbai regions area is occupied for agriculture and 26% is covered by forestlands16. According to the 2001 Census, Mumbai had a population of 11,914,398. Recent estimates showed that Mumbais population grew at compounded rate of around 1.98% per annum touching 13,662,800 in 2008 with an average population density roughly estimated to be 22,000 people per km2. Mumbai is considered the financial capital of the country as it generates 6% of the total GDP of the nation17. In 2009, Mumbais GDP was Rs. 200,483 crores (USD 42.7 billion) and per capita income was Rs. 128,000 (USD 2,730) which is almost 3 times the national average (FT 2008). Many of Indias business conglomerates and Fortune 500 companies have headquarters in Mumbai. Until the 1970s Mumbais economy flourished on textile mills and sea trade. Port and shipping industry is an established sector in Mumbai, with Mumbai port being one of the oldest and significant ports in India. In the past 3 decades, the economy has diversified into other sectors such as engineering, diamond polishing, healthcare, information technology, media and entertainment. A significant part of Mumbais workforce was employed in state and central government undertakings. Mumbai also has a large workforce of semi-skilled self employed population who earn a livelihood as hawkers, taxi drivers, mechanics, vendors and other service and manufacturing professions. A very large recycling industry exists in the Central Mumbai region that processes waste for other parts of the city, which is a major source of employment for the informal sector. Nariman point area in south Mumbai was the first Central Business District (CBD) as the city expanded in the period between 1950s and 1960s. During that period, growth of real estate for businesses and offices was taking place within a small geographical area in South Mumbai (Nariman Point CBD area). While affordable housing was increasingly available mainly in the north and east parts of Mumbai. Over a period of time, this resulted in a large workforce travelling to South Mumbai creating increasing levels of road and rail congestion. Over the years, Nariman Point CBD area became saturated with the consequence that real estate prices increased as new land was not available for further real estate development.
16
http://www.mcgm.gov.in/irj/portalapps/com.mcgm.ahome_keyprojects/docs/12%20Regional%20Setting.pdf Retrieved 12 August 2010

17
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/gdp-growth-surat-fastest-mumbai-largest/266636/ Retrieved 11 August 2010
20
For decades, Mumbais spatial development followed a mono-centric, linear pattern of growth wherein, office and commercial activity concentrated at the southern end of the city, the industrial and residential development spread northwards along the suburban rail corridors. The first regional plan for Mumbai Metropolitan Region was sanctioned in 1973. The Regional Plan of 1973 sought to alter this pattern by developing Navi Mumbai on the main land across the harbour, and by creating other growth centres, like Bandra-Kurla Complex and Kalyan Complex. Since then, much efforts and investment have gone into development of these growth centres, relocation of economic activities from the Island City, and creation of new infrastructure, such as, Mankhurd - Belapur railway line and Jawaharlal Nehru Port. These efforts, together with large population growth in Thane, Kalyan, Bhiwandi, Vasai - Virar area and massive industrial investment taken place outside Greater Mumbai set in motion an irreversible process of spatial decentralization. The proposals of the revised Land Use Plan in the Regional Plan 1996-2011 (Phatak et al. 1999) reflected a logical extension of this process and were guided by existing development trends. Presently, South Mumbai continues to remain the most dominant business centre in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Bandra-Kurla Complex has developed as Mumbais new International Finance and Business Centre. Vashi has acquired a key position in Navi Mumbais development as the centre for wholesale trade. Similarly, Central Business District of Navi Mumbai, and the area around Jawaharlal Nehru Port have developed for port-related activities and have attracted office establishments, export processing activities etc. Owing to new investments in the new centres combined with good transport linkages between them have contributed to these centres being key job centres and areas between them, along transport corridors, are witnessing new development. This structure comprising of South Mumbai CBD, New Mumbai CBD, Jawaharlal Nehru Port, Bandra-Kurla Complex and Vashi form the Pentagon (See Figure 7). This has emerged as MMRDAs core of economic activity and population. The possibility of the Mumbai Trans-harbour Link, and second international airport at Mandwa are likely to strengthen the Pentagon pattern further. Beyond the Pentagon, the existing urban centres and the transport corridors joining them form two concentric arcs. The first encompasses Mira-Bhayandar, Thane, Panvel, Pen and Alibag. The second arc encompasses Vasai-Nalasopara, Bhiwandi, Kalyan, Ulhasnagar, Ambernath, Karjat and Khopoli. While the urban centres represent concentration of jobs and population, the intervening areas along the transport corridor will be stimulated for dense urbanization in the future. The resultant spatial pattern of the Regions development, thus, would consist of a core represented by the Pentagon, and rings of urban centres and development areas along the major transport links. This pattern (graphically represented in Figure 7) is guiding the present land use strategy.
21
New growth centres and new transport linkages are likely to give rise to a new spatial structure, new pattern. De-centralization of commercial areas has been visible in Mumbai but took some years for businesses and population to relocate. Office relocations in Mumbai have shown some typical trends. Establishments needing large areas and having captive clientele appear to have adopted decentralized locations while smaller establishments, essentially depending on inter linkages with other establishments and competing with similar establishments, have agglomerated in areas with relatively lesser real estate market prices. In Andheri, (near Saki Naka and SEEPZ) a lot of new offices related to electronics are coming up mainly through land use conversions from residential to industrial zones. Road users are diverse and employ slow, medium and fast motorized and non-motorized vehicle types (mixed traffic) on the same road infrastructure. For example, vehicles include cyclists, pedestrians, hand carts, bullock carts, auto rickshaws, cars/taxis, commercial vehicles which include trucks, vans, trailers, tankers & tempo. Many of the roads are inaccessible to slow modes of transport and are indicated through notifications by the Traffic Police on their website. Table 4 shows the traffic counts in high volume junctions around the city. Transport of millions of Mumbai citizens and goods is done by train, road and water transport modes. Over 88% of the Mumbai commuters and a small part of goods is transported by public transport (suburban trains or buses) because it is the most convenient, efficient and cheap transport to a population that cannot afford a car or use a private goods vehicle. Mumbai has the most extensive bus and rail networks among Indias major cities.
22
Figure 7: Spatial structure and commercial areas in the Mumbai city Source: (Phatak, Pendharkar, & Patkar, 1999)
23
Table 4: Finding from traffic count at different Mumbai road junctions in Jan 2009 (Rush Hour period)18 All buses 119 112 68 160 112 Cars/taxis 1328 3300 2550 6004 3300 Auto rickshaws19 452 2 wheelers 466 992 560 880 992 Commercial vehicles 73 90 30 90 90 Locations Chembur Mahim Haji Ali Agripada Mahim
Mumbai Suburban Railways: Mumbais commuter rail services are not only used for passenger movements, but also for freight movements. The Mumbai Suburban Railway system forms the backbone of the Mumbai dabbawala transportation system. Each suburban train in Mumbai is formed of electric multiple units (EMUs) predominantly formed as 9 or 12 car rakes of which 3 rakes dedicated to goods transport. A dedicated goods rake is located in the front, middle and rear sections of each suburban train. Typically, the goods compartment has wide doors on either side of the rake and has open space for stowage of cargo inside each goods compartment. The main skeleton of the rail network in Mumbai was laid down over 100 years ago, initially to link Mumbai and adjacent townships20. This network grew rapidly to become the Mumbai termini of two great trunk railways interlacing the Indian sub-continent. The system consists of about 300 km of suburban rail serves 95 stations making use of linear geography, moving 6.9 million people every day and constitutes more than half of the total daily passenger capacity of Indian railways itself. Today Mumbai is served by two zonal railways - Western and Central (See Figure 8). The Western Railway line runs northward from Churchgate terminus station in Mumbai CBD parallel to the west coast of the island towards northern and western India and Delhi21. Suburban operations extend up to 60 km northward up to Virar. The Central Railway runs
18 19
http://www.mesn.org/mumbai%20traffic%20stats.html#5 Retrieved 11 August 2010
Auto Rickshaws are not allowed to operate south of Sion area and therefore the table shows Auto Rickshaw counts as zero in those specific areas. http://www.irfca.org/articles/mumbai-locals.html Retrieved 11 August 2010 http://www.irfca.org/articles/mumbai-locals.html Retrieved 11 August 2010
20 21
24
from Mumbai Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) situated on the eastern side of the Island and serve a large part of Central India. Suburban services extend from Mumbai CST as far as Kasara to the north east (120 km) and Karjat to the south east (100 km). The Central Railway is also responsible for services on the Harbour Line which runs from CST along the east side of Mumbai Island to Rawli Junction where the line splits. One branch goes to north west to join the western railway main line at Bandra, with other line continuing northward to Kurla, before turning east wards to serve Chembur and Mankhurd and cross the new Thane Creek bridge to access the developing city of new Mumbai. The railway tracks are encroached upon by the squatters very close to the railway line in the Chembur Govandi area, resulting in speed restrictions having to be imposed on the trains for safety. At Wadala, the Mumbai Port Trust rail line joins the harbour line and north of Wadala. The harbour lines are shared with freight traffic to and from the Mumbai docks. Within the Mumbai area both railways carry a combination of suburban, long distance and freight traffic. Within Mumbai many stations are less than 1.5 km apart and in some cases, less than 1 km. Such close stations are characteristic of a metropolitan urban railway rather than a suburban system. In addition to the lines radiating from Mumbai there is a single track connection between Vasai Road on the Western Railway and Diva on the Central Railway. This allows long distance north south trains to bypass Mumbai. The branch from Diva junction to Roha provides a link to the Konkan railway. Due to its extensive reach across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region and efficiency of suburban rail, the system suffers from severe overcrowding unknown to any other rail system of similar dimension. Over 4,500 passengers are packed in a 9 car rake during peak hours as against a capacity of 1,700. For goods transport too, 3 dedicated rakes are observed inadequate during peak hour traffic. Due to insufficient oversight, many passengers are known to use dedicated goods rakes for commuting during peak hours. This further reduces available capacity and increases inconvenience to carry goods during the train journey.
25
Figure 8: Mumbai suburban Railway Network (Source: www.mapsofindia.com )
26
Road Infrastructure Network: The organized freight haulage industry in the city of Mumbai predominantly utilizes the road transport for the movement of goods. Mumbai region has an extensive road infrastructure network and is well connected by 4 National Highways (to Pune, Nasik, Goa and Ahmedabad) and 19 designated State highways for inter-regional passenger and goods traffic. Mumbai region has about 2,000 km of road length including 11 flyovers, 47 Road over bridges (ROBs) and 104 bridges. The structural condition of the roads is generally good, though the riding surface deteriorates during monsoons as unprecedented rains and flooding is common. The road network has developed in a predominantly north-south direction. Extensive development over much of the peninsula has led to the major traffic movements being concentrated into three main corridors: western, central and eastern. The western corridor generally provides higher level of service than central and eastern corridors. The central corridor, especially in the south Island area, is severely congested with high pedestrian movements and bus traffic. The eastern corridor which runs adjacent to the port area, carries large volume of truck traffic and suffers badly from long term parking and informal roadside vehicle maintaining activities. East- West movement is constrained by the Western and Central Railway tracks which also run majority of the length of the Island City. Consequently major traffic movements are concentrated on relatively few roads, resulting in major points of congestion where east-west movements intersect the north-south corridors. To the north of Mumbai Island, east-west movements are further restricted by the limited number of crossing points on the Mithi river. This lack of good link between places like Santacruz and Chembur often results in considerably long detours via Sion and the Western and Eastern Express Highways, both for passenger and freight movements within the Mumbai region. The roads of Mumbai serve not only as a means of transport provision but also function as parking areas for vehicles, extended footways, sites for hawkers and other commercial activities. In some places notably on the Western Expressway, part of the right of way has been encroached upon by slums. These other functions, together with frequent disruption due to service provision and maintenance, severely reduce the traffic capacity of Mumbai roads and highways. The road network has developed piecemeal and this has resulted in some junctions acting as a focus for a large number of intersecting streets. These tend to be controlled by traffic signals which have long cycle times to accommodate the large turning movements at the junctions. Delays to traffic are considerable and the problem increases wherever pedestrians and goods vehicles compete with passenger traffic for the limited road space.
27
When these junctions are located in close proximity, which is the case in many areas in Mumbai CBD, severe traffic congestion occurs, resulting in low average journey speeds of less than 10 km/h. The areas around Churchgate and Mumbai Central railway stations are particularly congested during the morning and evening peak periods. However traffic speeds on the eastern and Western Express Highways and on the main corridors in Mumbai region is reasonably better due to active traffic management enforced by the traffic police. Freight movement is concentrated around Masjid Bunder, port areas, Byculla and Mazagaon areas in the island city while Navi Mumbai, Ghatkopar, Kurla, Vikhroli and Bhandup in the suburbs. De-centralisation policies in the early 1990s have led to the relocation of the following wholesale markets from Masjid Bunder area to Turbhe near Vashi: Onion and Potato Market; Grain, rice, oil seeds market; Condiment, spices, sugar, jaggery and dried fruits markets; Iron and Steel stockholding sites and wholesaling markets were shifted to Kalamboli in Navi Mumbai. Due to the above shifting, it is observed that the heavy vehicular traffic is slowly declining in the City areas while the traffic on Express Highways and National Highways is growing.
2.3 URBAN TRANSPORT PROBLEMS IN CITY OF MUMBAI

2.3.1 State of the art
Urban freight transport demand has increased as a consequence of increasing urban population, consumption patterns mainly as a consequence of increased economic activity and the mushrooming of malls for shopping. Due to the availability of a large diversity of consumer products and shopping malls all across the city, Mumbai experiences a massive increase in urban freight transport movements generally similar to cities in developing economies. From 1991 to 2005, the total number of motorized vehicles (goods and passenger) more than doubled from 0.6 to 1.3 million. While the vehicles multiplied 37 times over the last 50 years, Mumbais road network only doubled. The number of registered vehicles (goods and passenger together) is growing at 4-5% per annum. Trailers have also registered 9% CAGR reflecting the increase in containerized goods movement through Mumbais ports22.
22
http://www.mcgm.gov.in/irj/portalapps/com.mcgm.ahome_keyprojects/docs/25%20Urban%20Transportation.pdf Retrieved on 14 August 2010
28
Road traffic density during peak hours in some areas of the city is so high that the average speeds climb down to as low as 6 km/h especially in the areas of Sion, Bandra and Dadar. In addition to vehicular growth other major factors for road congestion are identified as follows: Inadequate capacity of existing arterial roads linking CBD areas to the rest of Mumbais Metropolitan Region is identified as one of the main issues causing road congestion. There is a lack of East-West and North-South connectivity linking the commercial business centre for the movement of people and urban freight along these corridors. The existing arterial roads ( Eastern and Western Express Highways) and suburban rail infrastructure (Western, Central and Harbour Lines) are proving inadequate for the increasing traffic volumes over the years; Free flow of traffic is seriously hampered by unplanned and frequent digging of roads by utility agencies/companies for laying utility lines throughout the year which after roads restoration leave the road in a bad condition. This causes road width to decrease on localized areas causing severe bottlenecks and problems of congestion; The poor riding surfaces in internal road networks either because of neglect or poor quality of maintenance (especially post monsoons every year) is a cause of slow traffic movement and resultant congestion. Road closures or diversions to promptly attend to maintenance works aggravate the traffic problems of congestion in the city; Traffic bottlenecks exist in the form of narrow right of ways in certain dense traffic regions in the citys road networks resulting in overall drop in traffic speeds; Because of the severe imbalance of parking spaces and number of vehicles in the city, car and goods vehicles are forced to resort to on-street parking causing decrease in road capacity for free flow of traffic on the road networks. In 2007, common parking spaces were available for only 8,000 vehicles in 100 odd pay and park areas across city. The citys vehicular density is 591 vehicles per km2 compared to the international average vehicular density of 300 vehicles per km2
23
. While some
warehouses and retail outlets have dedicated parking areas, in most cases they are inadequate, hence the solution is to park on the streets, sometimes double and triple parking. This inevitably creates problems for drivers and for the traffic police who are unable to clear congested roads, making traffic jams inevitable; Proliferation of slums especially on sites reserved for essential infrastructure particularly of transport is causing impediments to the implementation of transport
23
http://www.dnaindia.com/opinion/editorial_mumbai-s-parking-problem_1080666 Retrieved on 15 August 2010
29
infrastructure augmentation projects. Most of these encroachments are on lands allocated to public infrastructure projects; Fragmented transport planning and decision-making: issues, policies, projects related to urban transport are handled at different levels by different departments in the region. There is a lack of coherent integrated approach in planning and managing transport infrastructure and services. Further the necessary investment is not coming in the transport sector due to financial constraints of respective organizations. Due to the fragmented planning and implementation of projects, urban transport (both passenger and freight) is negatively affected. As a direct consequence of road congestion and vehicular growth, negative externalities such as delays, air pollution and increased fuel consumption negatively impact Indias economy, human health and energy security. Mumbai is considered as one of the most polluted cities in the world24. The growth of population, vehicles and industrial activity has aggravated air pollution levels. Vehicular emissions are found to be a major source of air pollution particularly at locations with higher traffic intensity. Table 5: Daily fatalities in accidents in Mumbai Metropolitan Region Year Persons killed every day Road 2002 2003 2004 2005 5 5 6 7 Rail 10 10 13 12 Total 15 15 19 19
Source: (Lea, 2007)
In Mumbai, pollution from road and building construction is second only to vehicular pollution. The effects of increase in air pollution have serious effects on health and wellbeing of its citizens. A recent survey in May 2010 showed that deaths due to respiratory tract infections increase by 20%25. Official statistics (see Table 5) show increasing trend in the number of road and rail accident fatalities over time which pose another problem to policy makers as a consequence of traffic
24
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4qQxabgL0ucJ:www.gits4u.com/envo/envo19 .htm+10+most+polluted+mumbai&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=in Retrieved on 15 August 2010

25
http://www.gits4u.com/envo/envo19.htm Retrieved on 15 August 2010
30
growth. As per 2009 statistics available from the traffic department of the Mumbai police, there were 6,613 road accidents in which 662 people were killed. The highest number of accidents was caused by cars in which the casualties were 105 followed by trucks which caused 94 deaths26. Goods transport in Mumbai is important as two major ports of the country are located in Mumbai region and the region is well connected by rail and road with the rest of the country. Intercity flow of goods is characterized by bulk shipment, whereas intra city movements are characterized by smaller shipments. The increase in the urban population, urban sprawl on the one hand and the relocation of wholesale markets and warehouses has triggered growth in urban freight transport volume and intensity. MMR produces 110,000 tonne of freight traffic daily, and attracts another 104,000 tonne on roads. Of this, Greater Mumbai generates about 43% and attracts 37% (Lea, 2007). Navi Mumbai, Bhiwandi and Thane regions are also important freight traffic attraction centres. About 16% of the total freight movement constitutes through traffic, not stopping in MMR. The annual urban freight transport growth rate in Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) is estimated to be 5.7% which means an inflow of goods tonnage to MMR is expected to increase from 100,000 tonnes in 2005 to 440,000 tonnes by 2031. According to (Lea, 2007), truck terminal area requirement will need to be increased from 350 Ha in 2005 to 1450 Ha by 2031.
2.3.2
Expected urban transport problems in the future
According to MMRDAs Mumbai Regional Plan, the citys population is expected to grow 23 million by 2011 assuming the growth rate of 2.2% per annum. Accordingly, Mumbais urban population is projected to double in the next 32 years making the problem even more worrying. In fact, travel demand is often linked to economic growth more than population growth. The forecasted private vehicle growth in MMR is expected to grow by 9 million by 2031, an estimated increase of approximately 4.5 times from 2005. High vehicular growth is expected in Thane, Kalyan and Pen-Raigad areas compared to Greater Mumbai. In the case of Mumbai, as vehicular growth is taking place even faster than population growth, this could have serious implications on sustainability of the economic growth unless immediate proactive steps to mitigate the existing problems are not managed well.
26
http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_mumbai-tops-in-accidental-deaths_1351819 Retrieved on 15 August 2010
31
According to the CTS Report, the annual growth rate of goods vehicle traffic assessed from past growth trends at 5.9% per annum. The inflow of goods tonnage of MMR is expected to increase from 100,000 tonnes in 2005 to 4.4 million tonnes in 2031. The existing high rate of on-street parking of goods vehicles clearly indicates the shortage of dedicated parking and truck terminal areas in the MMR region. The CTS has therefore proposed a long term strategy to expand truck terminal area from 350 Ha (2005) to 1450 Ha by 2031. The short term measures proposed mainly consist of improving access roads to the terminal areas, creation of adequate basic infrastructure in terminal areas (Lea, 2007). The observed speeds on some of the major corridors in the study area from 1990-2005 indicate that overall speeds are decreasing with time and this trend would continue into the future unless a combination of infrastructure capacity addition with appropriate transport demand management measures are used.
32
3 INSTITUTIONAL
FRAMEWORK AND CURRENT TRANSPORT AND
LOGISTICS POLICIES 3.1 NATIONAL LEVEL

3.1.1 Institucional Framework At The National Level
The organisation of transport system in India is institutionally complicated. Many of the transport sector activities are state controlled, there are other significant segments which are almost entirely in the private sector. But, the strong and sustained thrust towards deregulation has seen that private investment and practices are slowly entering the transport sectors which previously were fully under Government control. The relative importance of the state, organisation of the various transport sectors within States and the current structure of provisioning of infrastructure, services and regulation are brought in Table 6. The responsibility for transport is largely overseen at a Central Government level by the: Ministry of Road and Highways Transport for inter-city roads, highways and expressways; Ministry of Urban Development for transport infrastructure development within the cities; Ministry of Railways for the national and some commuter rail services; Ministry of Shipping for Major ports, inland waterways and shipping; Civil Aviation Ministry for airlines and airport.
Within each of the above Ministries, transport infrastructure planning, policy making, investment, design, construction, regulation and enforcement functions are carried out by a myriad of agencies and organisations (Refer Table 6). The Indian railway system is a monolithic departmental enterprise which covers provision and maintenance of the track network, operation of freight and passenger services and also substantial production units for rolling stock (Raghuram 2000). Railways have been the slowest to allow private investment and management into rail infrastructure and services. More recently, there are plans to allow private participation to upgrade the rail network and improve the quality of services.
33
Table 6: Transport sector - involvement of State and private sector

Physical Basis / assets Ownership / Control Air Regulator (State controlled) DGCA, AAI (Partly Open) AAI, Defence, Private Consortiums (Open to all) IA, AI, private airlines Rail (State controlled) Indian Railways (State controlled) Indian Railways (State controlled) Indian Railways Road (State controlled) NHAI, PWD, urban Admin., local Govts. Defence (Open to all) SRTUs, large industries, trucking companies, etc. (Open to all) SRTUs, private vehicle owners Water (State controlled) GoI, State Maritime Boards, Port Directorates, TAMP (Partly Open) Major Ports, GoI, State Maritime Boards, Port Directorates, Private & captive ports, TAMP (Open to all) SCI27, GESCO28, ESSAR, Varun and others
Terminals
Rolling Stock Maintenance Services
Terminals
(State Controlled) AAI (Open to all) IA, AI, other private airlines
(State Controlled) Indian Railways, large captive industries (State Controlled) Indian Railways (State controlled) Indian Railways, large industries for captive sidings (State controlled) Indian Railways (State controlled) Indian Railways IR Parliament, Railway Rates Tribunal IR, Railway Claims Tribunal
(Open to all) SRTUs, large industries, trucking companies (Open to all) Small scale garages, large workshops for SRTUs, private workshops (Open to all) SRTUs, large industries, transport companies, State warehousing corporation (Open to all) SRTUs, private vehicle owners (Open to all) SRTUs, private bus operators, TCI, forwarding agents, etc. RTO Market forces Market forces
(State Controlled) Major ports, GoI. State Maritime Boards, Port Directorates, some private & captive ports (Open to all) Port dry docks, ABG, Bharati Shipyards, CSL, HSL & HDPE (Partly open) Major ports, GoI, State Maritime Boards, Port Directorates, some private and captive ports (Open to all) SCI, GESCO, ESSAR, others (Open to all) Brokers, charterers, forwarding agents DG Shipping DG Shipping, TAMP, private ports DG Shipping
Rolling Stock / Equipment Operations
Terminals
(Partly open) DGCA, AAI, private cos. (Open to all) IA, AI, other private airlines (Open to all) IA, AI, other private airlines DGCA Market forces for private airlines, DGCA DGCA
Rolling Stock
Customer Services Regulations Licensing Pricing Service levels
Source: Updated from (Raghuram 2000)
27 28
Shipping Corporation of India (State owned shipping company) Great Eastern Shipping Company Pvt. Ltd.
34
In sharp contrast, a large number of organisations are involved in road transport including Central Government (for highways and expressways), State Governments (for state highways and PMGSY29), Defence Ministry (for border roads) and large industries and contractors (for project roads). A few city Municipalities have organised truck terminals under supervision of the local governments. In road services, infrastructure and terminal maintenance is vested to private concessionaires or else to national/state or local governments. Maintenance of the rolling stock and equipment is largely managed by a vast number of small scale garages all over the country. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORTH), the Ministry of Urban Development, the Rail Ministry, the Ministry of Shipping and the Civil Aviation Ministry have independently chalked out different transport development strategies and identified areas of investment specific to their transport sector. The Ministry of Urban Development is responsible for formulating policies, supporting and monitoring programmes and coordinating the activities of various Central Ministries, State Governments and other nodal authorities related to urban development. The mandate extends to urban transport policy making as well.
3.1.2
National Urban Transport Policy
To proactively address the issues of urban transport such as transport delays, accident risk, deterioration of air quality and increased consumption of petroleum fuels impacting Indias energy security, the Government of India announced a National Urban Transport Policy in April 200630. The policy focused on the need to move people not vehicles. The policy measures were directed towards:
29 30
Improvements in public transport and facilities for the use of non-motorised modes; Sought greater involvement of private sector in transport infrastructure development, provision of public transport services; Innovative financing mechanisms to enhance efficiency and reduce the impact on public budget; Better integration of land use and transport planning to reduce travel demand; Encourage the use of cleaner technologies;
Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana programme to build and maintain rural roads http://www.urbanindia.nic.in/policies/TransportPolicy.pdf Retrieved on 30 August 2010
35
Building capacity of urban transport planning at institutional level; Create awareness amongst people to muster support for initiatives that require tough decision making and compromises that some people might need to make.
The NUTP acknowledges that freight traffic will grow substantially as cities, population and economic activities expand. Timely and smooth freight movements are crucial for the well being of the people and economic viability of the city. Amongst the policy measures proposed are further encouraging: Using off peak passenger travel times to move freight; Earmarking late night hours for freight movements within the city and restricted entry of heavy vehicles into cities during day time; Building of bypasses through public private partnerships for freight trucks enabling such traffic to go around the city and not add to city traffic; All the wholesale activities are proposed to be located at the periphery of the city along the major rail and/or highway rather than at the city centre, therefore developing dedicated truck terminals for parking facilities for freight trucks outside city limits through public private partnerships31; Parking spaces must be provided at appropriate locations on street/ off-street with proper management and use of ITS. Appropriate parking fees should be levied to manage the demand and reflect the cost of urban land used for the purpose; Planning of ring roads to relieve traffic congestion in the central area and also allow balanced urban development. Similarly, bypass roads to be planned and developments along such bypasses controlled to ensure that such bypasses do not become arterial city roads in the future. All new satellite townships/ emerging activity centres (SEZs) planned for future are either developed along defined major transport corridors and/or integrated properly with mass transit systems in the Master Plan itself; Implementation of Auto Fuel Policy approved by the Government of India in 2001 that laid down the roadmap for tighter emission regulations up to 2010 for new vehicles (See Table 7). Vehicles produced before the first mass emission norms in 1991 would require to be replaced; Adoption of alternate fuel vehicles as an important step to clean the environment by bringing industry into confidence and building a consensus on a roadmap indicating
31
National Urban Transport Policy
36
strict time frames for their adoption and supply for necessary fuel supply infrastructure (See Table 7).
Table 7: Indian Auto fuel policy 2001 Vehicle Category Commercial vehicles 2&3 wheelers Passenger vehicles Bharat Stage II (entire country) 1 April 2005 1 April 2005 1 April 2005 1 April 2005 Bharat Stage III (11 metros) 1 April 2005 Bharat Stage III (entire country) 1 April 2010 Preferably April 2008 but not later than 1 April 2010 1 April 2010 Bharat Stage IV (11 metros) 1 April 2010
1 April 2010
Source: (Chandra 2006)
Table 8: Proposed time frame for introducing cleaner vehicles Time Frame Short Term Medium Term Long Term Technology Ethanol, CNG, LPG Bio diesel, Electric vehicles, Hybrid Electric Vehicles Hydrogen / Fuel Cell Source: (Chandra 2006)
The Ministry of Road Transport & Highways developed a legal and regulatory framework for inspection, maintenance and certification of in-use vehicles in the country to improve air quality and safety on the roads. Presently, vehicular emissions are governed under Section 56 of Motor vehicle Act and Rule 62 of Central Motor Vehicle Rules for commercial vehicles. The procedure is for the vehicle owners to get their vehicles attended at dealer/private workshops and to offer them for inspection to the Regional Transport Department. Certificates are issued generally after visual inspection and normally valid for one year.
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3.2 URBAN LEVEL (MUMBAI CITY LEVEL)

3.2.1 Institutional framework at the urban level of Mumbai City
A number of governmental organisations are involved in the urban freight and logistics sector in the city of Mumbai for the development and management of transport infrastructure and services in addition to the Mumbai Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM). They are tabulated in along with their main responsibilities and functions in Table 9)32. The current legal institutional arrangements for managing urban transport (passenger and freight together) were developed at a time when urban transport was not a major problem. As a result, there is a high degree of fragmentation and separate enactments covering different transport modes. There is no dedicated administrative authority in India to administer urban freight transport. The planning and implementation of urban transport infrastructure rests with multiple agencies which do not necessarily work in a coordinated manner. In most cities, the goods transport is fully deregulated and fares are governed by market forces. Roads are built and managed by local bodies or State Public Works Department.
Table 9: Governmental Organisations involved in urban transport in Mumbai Governmental Organisations Municipal Corporation of Greater (MCGM) Mumbai Responsibilities / Functions Construction & maintenance of flyovers and bridges Road up gradation Removal of obstructions, projections in and upon streets To provide safe, efficient, affordable and courteous passenger services at an economic fare Planning & coordination of Mumbai Metropolitan region Responsible for the Mumbai Urban Transport Project Plan, investigate, design, construct, manage, promote and operate road projects & area development Invite tenders, bids, offers & contract for the above purposes Port development in Mumbai
Brihanmumbai Electric Supply & Transport Undertaking (BEST) Mumbai Metropolitan Authority (MMRDA) Maharashtra State Corporation (MSRDC) Region Development
Road
Development
Maharashtra Maritime Board
32
http://www.mcgm.gov.in/irj/portalapps/com.mcgm.ahome_keyprojects/docs/13%20Urban%20Governance%20Framework.pdf Retrieved 13 August 2010
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JNPT & Mumbai Port Trust City & Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra Ltd. (CIDCO) Mumbai Railway Vikas Corporation Ltd.
Food Corporation of India (FCI), Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC), Maharashtra State Warehousing Corporation National Airports Authority of India (NAAI) Indian Post Indian Airlines & Air India
Integrated seaport facilities for handling, storage and delivery of cargo/container to customers Land use planning and development of Navi Mumbai region Management of the Mumbai suburban train services Implementation of rail infrastructure projects in Mumbai suburban stations Commercially develop railway land and airspace in Mumbai Raise funds for suburban railway development Warehousing, clearing, forwarding, handling, transportation, procurement and distribution Additional Services such as disinfestations, fumigation and ancillary activities Airport cargo complex air-sea & domestic parcel services Air freight service provider
Goods transport within the city of Mumbai is fully privatised and regulated through the permit system. The structure of the road goods transport is very complex and comprises of many stakeholders including, transport operators, consignee/consignor, intermediaries booking agents/transport companies (who could be operators also) and brokers (who could be placed on either side of the booking agents and normally work for a commission). The different stakeholders (employers only) in freight transport are organised through associations that strive to protect the interests of their members and lobby governments. The different associations related to goods transport are listed as below: 1. Federation of Freight Forwarders Association in India;33 2. Mumbai and Nhava Sheva Ship Agents Association;34 3. Bombay Custom House Agents Association; 4. Bombay Goods Transport Association; 5. Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) for Western Region; 6. Container Shipping Lines Association (India); 7. Federation of Indian Export Organisations; 8. Indian Institute of Packaging;
33 34
http://www.fffai.org/mission.asp Retrieved on 13 August 2010
http://www.startlocal.in/manufacturing_and_industrial/transport_forwarding_agents/maharashtra/Mu mbai_Nhava_Sheva_Ship_Agents_Association_2102173.html Retrieved on 13 August 2010
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9. Maharashtra Chamber of Commerce & Industry; 10. Western India Automobile Association;35 11. Indian Freight Club; 12. Air Cargo Agents Association of India; 13. All India Confederation of Goods Vehicles Owners Association (AIGVOA). Trade and labour Unions in the interests of the employees in the urban transport sector and employees in the industry are as follows: 1. All India Motor Transport Union; 2. BEST Pariwahan Karmachari Sangh; 3. Union Clearing Services; 4. Transport and Dock Workers Union; 5. BEST Workers Union; 6. Motormens Union (Mumbai Suburban railways).
The users of road freight transport are the manufacturers, distributors, retailers of goods and the general public who are typically expected to represent the demand side of the market. Operators are expected to provide the services in terms of movement (Sriraman et al. 2006). The intermediaries seem to play a significant role in the provision of road goods transport services. These can be normally of two categories: (1) Booking agents/Transport companies/transport contractors and (2) Brokers / Commission agents/ Suppliers of Vehicles. Booking agents are firms or persons who accept and store goods, both parcels and bulk and arrange for their movement through operators. This agent acts as the owner of the cargo i.e. he negotiates with and on behalf of the users (Sriraman et al. 2006). His responsibility is to collect and distribute goods carried by goods carriages. He is also responsible for cargo loss and damage claims while performing other customer service functions. In some cases, the agents employ their own trucks and function as operators. In addition, agents also advance money to operators (especially small ones) to help meet their working capital requirements and by discounting bills on unloading. A Broker normally represents the supply side i.e. the truck operators and is sought out by truck operators for loads, though some have also represented user interests for a commission. The broker takes a commission from the truck owners and ensures the supply of trucks to the transport company/booking agent (Sriraman et al. 2006). Given that the dependence on small
35
http://www.maharashtradirectory.com/industrialresources/manufacturers-associations-mumbai.htm Retrieved on 13 August 2010
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operators is significant, the broker ensures reliability of the operators (e.g. the movement etc. for the user). Large fleet operators depend on these brokers for moving a certain volume of traffic over and above what their own fleet would permit. Surveys conducted by (Sriraman et al. 2006) found that there are three areas from which most of the intermediaries operate. A significant location is the Masjid Bunder/ Wadi Bunder/ P. DMello (city) area. This has traditionally been the area of their operations especially till the last decade, since only limited movement of trucks in the city (due to time restrictions) have been permitted. With the shifting of some of the major wholesale markets to the New Mumbai area and emergence of warehousing facilities in New Mumbai, Bhiwandi and Wadala, intermediaries have begun operating from these three areas as well. Though the market in the city area (in terms of intermediaries) is still significant at present, they are gradually relocating to the new warehousing facilities in the Mumbai suburbs. It is estimated that there are around 5,000 booking agents/ transport companies operating in the Mumbai region (Sriraman et al. 2006). About 1,200 of these are formally associated with the Bombay Goods Transport Association (BGTA) as members.
3.2.2 Mumbais Urban Transport Policy

One of the big challenges of achieving the objectives of National Urban Transport Policy is controlling urban expansion and integrating city development plans with transportation plans. To ensure this the Jawaharlal National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) for each city was established to consolidate fragmented programmes and schemes under one umbrella. The JNNURM requires cities to prepare a Comprehensive City Development Plan (CDP) as a vision document before it is able to access funding from JNNURM (Chandra 2006). The CDP is required to include a broad city investment plan that enlists priority projects for the city. From CDPs received from the different cities in India, it was observed that the transport projects in many cities were more of a compilation of requirements of individual agencies/departments within the city administration and lacked an overall transport or mobility plan. This showed the continuance of multiple fragmented decision making departments for urban transport planning and the absence of a single agency responsible for this (Chandra 2006). Road and bridge projects were proposed by public works departments or State road development corporations, bus transport systems by transport departments and metro rail systems by urban development departments. MMRDA with the assistance of World Bank under the Mumbai Urban Transport Project initiated a Comprehensive Transportation Study for Mumbai Metropolitan Region. M/S LEA International
41
Ltd. Canada in joint venture with LEA Associates South Asia Pvt. Ltd. was appointed by MMRDA to carry out the study on January 2005. The main objectives of the study are to identify travel and transport patterns of residents in Mumbai and recommend long term comprehensive transportation strategy for MMRDA up to 2031. According to the Comprehensive Transportation Study prepared by Lea Associates Pvt. Ltd. for Mumbai Metropolitan Region (Lea, 2007), the vision is to transform Mumbai city into a world class city in the next 10-15 years through a phased manner. In the Study urban freight transport specific goals have been identified to: To facilitate and promote economic growth of the Region; To minimize adverse environmental impacts that may occur in the process of economic growth; To improve efficiency of existing methods of resource mobilization; To adopt innovative methods of resource mobilization and facilitate, attract and guide private investment in desired directions; To consider and evaluate significantly different strategies in the long term for development of the Mumbai region; To support the goal of transforming Mumbai into a world class city with a vibrant economy and a globally comparable quality of life. The vision for the next 15 years will be reflected in the investment programme that will be implemented in a phased and time bound manner.
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4 MEASURES USED IN MUMBAI CITY

4.1 INTRODUCTION
Long term transport strategy has been proposed for Mumbai Metropolitan Region based on a detailed travel demand analysis conducted for the Comprehensive Transportation Study. Upgrading road network, development of goods terminals and traffic engineering measures such as flyovers, Road Over Bridges, Road Under Bridges, truck parking areas, traffic markings, road traffic controls etc. have been the dominant strategies so far; although other alternative strategies have been envisaged such as further capacity expansion and multimodal transfer facilities for seamless movement of goods from one mode to the other have been proposed and work on these projects are at different phases of implementation.
4.2 MEASURES USED IN MUMBAI CITY

Measures used in Mumbai for alleviation of traffic congestion have been a mix of land use policy measures, development of new urban transport infrastructure and expansion of the existing urban transport infrastructure network. These measures are categorised according to its type and are briefly reviewed below: 1. Interventions for loading / unloading: Development of truck terminals, truck parking lots
Orderly planning for the expansion and location of truck terminals forms an important objective in planning the transport system in Mumbai under the CTS Report. Based on the detailed analysis of goods vehicle movements, new truck terminals have been proposed. Approximately 44 major truck terminals have been identified in the study area. Five major truck terminals and 10 mini truck terminals are proposed to be developed by 2031 taking into consideration the expected Dedicated Rail Freight Corridor (DRFC), which is expected to reduce delays occurring due to inter-mixing of port related and city traffic. These are identified as follows: On Dedicated Rail Freight Corridor (DRFC), near boundary of MMR on NH-8 (MumbaiAhmedabad); On DRFC, near Taloja Industrial area; Near JN Port Trust;
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Near the proposed international airport in New Mumbai; Near intersection of NH3 (Mumbai-Nashik Road) and DRFC.
The Wadala Truck Terminal is developed by MMRDA on 115 hectares of land, to move the existing freight distribution centre from the Masjid Bunder area. The basic objective of developing the Truck Terminal is to decongest South Mumbai by shifting the existing transport companies offices and go downs, which are today concentrated in B&C Wards in South Mumbai causing severe traffic congestion. It will also help to rationalize the movement of truck traffic on the city roads. This is designed for a capacity of 3,000 trucks at a time with all infrastructure facilities like offices and go downs of transport companies, loading/unloading facilities, parking and idle trucks, banks, restaurants, dormitories, etc. The truck terminal will have free access to Eastern Express Highway and Anik-Panjarpol link, which forms the part of East Island Freeway. As economic activities gradually move north from the island city, the potential advantage of Wadala Truck Terminal in terms of its location will improve efficiency of freight distribution. Shifting of wholesale markets
In the 1990s a number of wholesale markets shifted from the South Mumbai to the New Mumbai area in order to relieve the traffic from the congested south part of the city36. To encourage relocation, MMRDA extended loan facilities for shifting the wholesale markets for building construction, construction of wholesale market blocks, shops-cum-godowns, surfacing of internal roads in the market yard, construction of well equipped central facility building for the wholesale fruit and vegetable markets, etc. Shifting of wholesale textile markets from South Mumbai to Bandra-Kurla Complex is under consideration. Restrictions on freight vehicles
Time and route restrictions on freight vehicles have been the preferred policy measures to relieve congestion on city roads in India. In the case of Mumbai city, restrictions on hourly and weekly periods of vehicle movements are regulated by the Mumbai traffic police. Mumbai traffic police issue traffic restrictions and enforce it in the city of Mumbai. The Traffic Control Branch regularly issues notifications to denote no parking areas on heavy vehicular movement, animal driven vehicles, handcarts, bicycles and others37.
2. Emerging (actualised) concepts:

36 37
http://www.mmrdamumbai.org/projects_swm.htm Retrieved on 11 August 2010 http://www.trafficpolicemumbai.org/Notifications.htm Retrieved on 11 August 2010
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Demand management and road user charges
Traffic restrictions scheme based on number plates has been implemented for regulating entry/exit to the Mumbai Metropolitan area. According to the scheme, vehicles with plates ending with 1 & 2 would be bared entry into Mumbai on Mondays. Those with number plates having the last digits 3 & 4 would not be allowed on Tuesdays, 5 & 6 on Wednesdays and, 7 & 8 on Thursdays and 9 & 0 on Fridays. Government and police cars, ambulances and emergency vehicles would be exempt from the ban. Improvement of existing public transportation, network and fleet
Mumbais suburban railway system is used for passenger as well as freight movements for intra-urban transport. For each suburban train at least 3 rakes are dedicated for goods transport. To improve the suburban rail system the Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP I & II) was developed as per recommendations of the Comprehensive Transportation Study and covers road and rail components. The thrust is to improve suburban rail system by adding rail capacity along western and central lines and completing two key east-west road links. The MUTP I (also called Bombay Urban Transport Project) concentrated mainly on improving the bus transport system in Mumbai operated by the BEST by procuring buses, construction of flyovers, installation of traffic signals etc. The MUTP I project was completed in 2008 and MUTP II has been formulated by Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation to further improve suburban rail system. MUTP envisages investment in suburban railway projects, local bus transport, new roads, bridges, pedestrian subways and traffic management activities. The second phase involves further optimisation of western and central lines and will take another 2-3 years. The total project cost is estimated to be Rs. 3,700 crore and is awaiting clearance from the Ministry of Railways, Government of India. Development of all north-south & east-west arterial roads and missing links
To reduce detour of freight and passenger movements in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, 3 major road infrastructure projects are underway to develop the main arterial roads and missing links. They are: a) Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project (MUIP) to augment east west connectivity and strengthening the north-south corridors by developing 17 high speed signal free corridor with dedicated bus lanes on north-south and east-west links. It will focus on improving the station areas. The project is ongoing with different components implemented by MCGM, MMRDA and MSRDC costing Rs. 2,648 crores;
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b) Mumbai Trans-Harbour Sea Link Project (Sewree to Nhava) to improve connectivity between the island city and mainland by building a 22 km long six lane bridge through to facilitate economic development in Mumbai Metropolitan region; c) Development of Western Sea link is to develop additional north-south corridor on the western flank of the city via 4 km long sea bridge from Western Express Highway to Worli Sea face. A North-South link connecting Worli end of Bandra-Worli sea link is now under construction to Nariman Point with a dispersal link connecting Cuffe Parade. The alignment runs a major sea bridge of 14 km abutting the western shore line. Development of freeways around Mumbai and connecting with the hinterland
In order to reduce congestion on the western corridor between Bandra and Nariman Point, the Western Freeway (Worli Nariman Point) is planned to be constructed via a 13.75 km sealink upto Priyadarshini park combined with a tunnel under the Malabar Hill.
All the above infrastructure projects are implemented under the JNNURM scheme under a Public Private Partnership basis framework. These projects were evolved in line with the overall transport strategy for MMRDA of improving North-South and East-West connectivity by provision of better road and rail networks as well as improving public transport system.
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5 SELECTED GOOD PRACTICE

5.1 INTRODUCTION
Mumbai Dabbawalas (also spelt as dabbawallas or dabbahwallahs) or tiffinwalas are used as the best practice case study for this deliverable. The Mumbai dabbawallas operations are widely recognised as an outstanding example of excellence in urban logistics (Balakrishnan & Teo 2004) (Jampani & Dutta 2004). Reportedly their mistake rate is just 1 in 16 million deliveries (i.e. 99.999999% accuracy) which caused the Forbes Global magazine to award this service the six sigma performance rating in 2001 (Mallik & Mukherjee 2007). Besides the accuracy rating, the Dabbawala supply chain system has also attracted interests from global educational institutions and think tanks for its complexity38. A dabbawala (meaning one who carries the box), is a person in Mumbai whose job is to carry and deliver freshly made food packed in lunch boxes from home to office workers. This case study was selected because the lunch delivery supply chain has become famous for their precision and efficiency. The case study is about food distribution logistics employing public transportation system (suburban railways) that is unique in Mumbai city. It is an indigenous model, conceived, developed and perfected by a group of individuals who have very little or no formal education in the area of logistics. This section provides a detailed analysis of the content and decisions made by the Mumbai dabbawalas in managing the system effectively.
Berkeley University in California teaches the logistic system of Dabbawalas as a case study in one of their business management programs and many Indian business schools and industry associations have the Dabbawala logistics system in their case-study agenda. In 1998 two Dutch filmmakers, Jascha De Wilde and Chris Relleke, made a documentary called "Dabbawalas, Mumbai's unique lunch service" and in 2001, the Christian Science Monitor, the Boston-based newspaper, covered the Dabbawalas in an article called "Fastest Food: It's Big Mac vs. Bombay's Dabbawalas" The British Broadcasting Corporation and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation have done features on the delivery system as well, while Prince Charles was so impressed with their service that he had even invited a few Dabbawalas to his wedding with Camilla Parker in London.
38
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5.2 THE DABBAWALAS OF MUMBAI

The measure is a case study of the dabbawalas or tiffin carriers of Mumbai. The logistics business thrives on the Mumbai employees whose needs are to get a home cooked meal respecting their culture and tastes. The delivery of the lunch boxes is an excellent case study that showcases excellence achieved in the informal sector, whose actors are proud of their rural roots and with the use of low technology and effective organisation. The case study presents a private logistics service organised in the informal sector and does not constitute any policy measure. The dabbawala operations originated way back in 1890 when India was under British rule (Mallik & Mukherjee 2007). At that time, people migrated for work to Mumbai from different states and belonging to different communities. At working places there were no canteens and many did not bring their lunches from home. Besides, different communities had different food habits, tastes and preferences which could only be satisfied by a homemade meal. Identifying this need, a gentleman named Mr. Mahadeo Medge started this lunch delivery service (Jampani & Dutta 2004). The Mumbai dabbawala operations are confined to Mumbai. The services include collection, transportation and delivery of lunch boxes from home to office location in the morning. In the evening the lunch boxes are moved in the reverse direction. A total number of 200,000 lunch boxes i.e. 400,000 transactions are carried out per day on all working days throughout the year. These services are available six days a week i.e. on 25 working days in a month. There is no disruption to work as long as the Mumbai suburban rail network is functional. The Mumbai Dabbawala system is organized as a co-operative movement, where the basic entity is the dabbawala. Upto 8 dabbawalas makes up a team. Upto 8 of such teams would form a group. There are 120 groups that together constitute the entire organization (Mallik & Mukherjee 2007). The basic model of the selected good practice heavily depends on teamwork and meticulous timing. There are around 5,000 dabbawalas in the system at any moment of time. Each dabbawala is assigned upto 30 customers in a specific geographical area. Each dabbawala visits his customers for tiffin box collection using a fixed route by bicycle or walking. The household is expected to keep the lunchbox ready when the dabbawala reports for collection, which is usually between 7.00 am and 9.00 am (Ravichandran 2005). If the lunch is not ready the dabbawala will leave for the next destination. After collecting approximately 30 of such lunch boxes they are brought to the nearest suburban railway station for sorting and onward transportation.
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i) Dabbawala carrying dabbas from home to nearest railway station ii) Sorting of dabbas at railway station
iii) Dabbawala bicycling to the closest Mumbai suburban railway station
iv) Re-sorting of dabbas at destination railway station
v) Dabbawalas delivering dabbas in crates from destination to end customer
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Usually more than one team of dabbawalas operate out of a collection point in a railway station. At the originating railway station a team of designated dabbawalas sorts the lunch boxes according to their destinations. The dabbas have a detailed and elaborate codification system that facilitates the sorting process. The codification system clearly identifies the origin of the lunch box, associated collection team member, destination, corresponding team leader, destination, location, building identification and floor number (Unnithan 2001). The dabbas are sorted based on the coding system at the closest origin railway station and bundled into groups for origin to hub transfer using the Mumbai suburban rail services. The origin to hub transfer normally happens in designated carts. These carts are loaded into predetermined compartments in the beginning or at the end of the train. At the destination railway station, the dabbas are re-sorted based on final destination (location, building and floor).The sorting and loading operations need care and are time bound. The lunch boxes arrive at the destination railway stations by 11:30 am. At each destination station, boxes are handed over to local dabbawalas (the last link in the chain), who deliver them to the end customer at their office locations in time for lunch hour by designated members. All dabbas are delivered before 1.00 pm. The empty boxes after lunch are again collected at the destination railway station and sorted to the respective origin location, placed on standard carts, loaded on trains and unloaded at the respective origin stations by designated members. The dabbas are then finally taken to individual households by the same dabbawala who collected them in the morning. Usually, by 5.30 pm all dabbas are delivered to households and the dabbawalas retire for the day. To better understand the complex sorting process, let's take an example. At Vile Parle Station, assume there are 20 teams of dabbawalas, each having 5 members and each member servicing 30 customers. That makes 3,000 tiffins in all. These 3,000 tiffins are collected by 9.00 am, reach the station and are sorted according to their destinations by 10.00 am when the 'dabbawala special' train arrives. The railway provides sorting areas on platforms as well as special compartments on trains travelling south between 10.00 am and 11.30 am. During the journey, these dabbawalas regroup according to the number of Tiffins to be delivered in a particular area, and not according to the groups they actually belong to. If 150 Tiffins are to be delivered in the Grant Road Station area, then 5 dabbawalas wait at that station, keeping in mind one person can carry no more than 30 tiffins. During the first sorting process, each dabbawala would have concentrated on locating only those 30 tiffins under his charge, wherever they come from, and this specialization makes the entire system efficient and almost error-free. Typically it takes about ten to fifteen minutes
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to search, assemble and arrange 40 Tiffins onto a crate, and by 12.30 am they are delivered to offices.
Coding System Most of the dabbawalas have migrated from villages to Mumbai in search of jobs. Due to economic hardship or lack of interest a majority of them have been educated up to primary school level. Hence, the dabbawala delivery system has adapted the coding system accordingly. Instead of technological solutions, the coding system is based on the exchanges of dabbas between dabbawalas. The system uses unique codes for the railway stations, origin/destination points and identity of the dabbawalas handling each dabba. For this, signs, different colours, numbers and a few letters are used and same is clearly marked on each dabba.
Figure 9: Coding system framework used by the Dabbawalas39
The codification system ensures complete traceability of lunch boxes in the system. It enables material flow and tracking of individual boxes by detailed information which integrates the knowledge and information of individual dabbawalas on route, origin, handling agent, destination address, etc. The address of the customer is painted on the top by the dabbawalas. The home address is not marked since the dabbawala knows by heart to which places in his collecting area he has to pick up his dabbas. If a new customer appears in his own collecting area, he will do the complete journey to check the address of delivery in order to fix with the other dabbawalas in which manner it will be then delivered. He will have to find who, on the way, will have a free place in his freight to take one more tiffin box up to which place, and so on up to the very place of delivery. Once the chain has been established, with all the necessary stops for exchange decided, it is possible to mark the address.
39
http://www.typocity.com/icon.htm Retrieved on 15 September 2010
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Figure 9 depicts a sample set of codes that are marked on a 'dabba' that help to identify the origin and destination points, help different groups of dabbawalas to identify their set of 'dabbas' at each leg of the journey and help sort the 'dabbas' at each juncture before they make the onward journey. Since many 'dabbawallas' are illiterate, the coding system is decided arbitrarily by the dabbawalas and known to all of them.
W1
W2
W3
W WORK AREAS
Figure 10: Dabbawala logistics activity chart: home to work
5.3 STAKEHOLDERS
The dabbawalas service is a monopoly in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Six stakeholders are identified that are directly involved in the provision of the dabbawala logistics system
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(see Table 10). The main clientele for the lunch box service as explained above are office going employees in the city of Mumbai (Pathak 2010). Their needs are to receive fresh food from home at reasonably cheap costs on a regular, reliable and fast service such that the food is at least warm when they consume it. These constitute the main requirement of the customers. As seen typically in the informal sector the dabbawala service does not make formal contracts with its clientele. The whole system relies on trust. When the dabba delivery service is commenced, service charges for a full month are collected in advance. Subsequently, money is collected in the first week of every month and remitted to the muqaddam on the first Sunday (Quien 1997). The range of customers includes students (both college and school), entrepreneurs of small businesses, managers, especially bank staff, and mill workers. They generally tend to be middle-class citizens who, for economy reasons, hygiene, caste, dietary restrictions or simply because they prefer wholesome food, rely on the dabbawala to deliver a home cooked mid-day meal (Quien 1997). New customers are generally acquired through referrals. Some are solicited by dabbawalas on railway platforms. Addresses are passed on to the dabbawala operating in the specific area, who then visits the customer to finalize arrangements. Table 10: Stakeholders directly involved in the Mumbai dabbawala logistics system Parties/stakeholders Working people in Mumbai Family members of the working people Canteens / catering services Employees of the dabbawala system Railway services Product manufacturers, providers, retailers, etc. Functions Clients (receivers) of the dabbawala service Suppliers of filled lunch boxes for delivery to family member in CBD area Suppliers of filled lunch boxes if home cooked food is not available Executing the dabbawala logistics service
The suburban Railway services are used to transport the tiffin boxes service Marketing of their products through the dabbawalas. Some are also customers of the service
Suppliers of the filled tiffin boxes i.e. family members of the working people in Mumbai support the dabbawala in meeting no delays in delivering lunch boxes. While the end customers, i.e. working people in Mumbai accept delivery at the ground floor level of their workplaces at destination locations.
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Canteens or catering service providers that cater to specific tastes are also hired to offer value added services in the distribution system. When a customer to the dabbawala service is unable to arrange home cooked food, he could opt for a canteen/catering service. The canteens prepare wholesome food, pack them in the standard tiffin boxes at the appropriate time and deliver it to the dabbawala who will then ensure it reaches the end customer. Of course, the charges of this value added service also include the costs of the catering services. It is not clear whether the dabbawalas receive a commission for employing a particular canteen service. The collection of the filled lunch boxes at the homes or canteens have to be ready at the prescribed time assigned by the dabbawalas. When the dabbawala knocks the door, the tiffin box should be ready. If not, then for 2-3 days the time is given to the customer to adjust for punctuality (Pandit 2007). After that if the delay persists, the services are stopped as it affects the services to other customers in the logistics chain. In this way, the system ensures that bad customers are discouraged by which the service efficiency, operation and profitability from existing customers is maintained. The members of the dabbawala service system are delighted to work for the Trust as they are supported by empowerment, compensation and a lifelong economic activity in the informal sector which is uncommon in other professions atleast in the informal employment sector. The suburban Railway services are employed for the main haulage of the tiffins. Every dabbawala buys a railway pass which allows them to make unlimited trips on designated routes for a period of time. The commuting passengers in suburban trains are generally tolerant to the inconveniences caused to them by the dabbawalas activities in the overcrowded, overstretched suburban rail transport services. The dabbwala service is also used to market consumer products and services selectively to its potential clientele. Realising the potential and reach of the dabbawalas several brands have tied up with them to reach out to consumers. For example, the most recent promotion is the one of confectionery company, Perfetti Van Melle India (PVMI). The company recently distributed its newly launched liquid-filled, mango-flavoured candy, Mangofillz with each tiffin box sent out. This is the first fruit candy from PVMI, as the other products are milkbased or breath-fresheners and gums40.
40
http://www.afaqs.com/perl/news/story.html?sid=26629) retrieved on 17 August 2010
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5.4 PRODUCT AND/OR SERVICE INVOLVED

The Mumbai dabbawala system is designed to collect, transport and distribute lunch boxes routinely to its customers every working day (Mallik & Mukherjee 2007). The service not only provides clean home food but it also delivers it safely against theft and pilferage. As bringing home cooked food is the main service provided by the dabbawala system, the characteristics of the goods and service requirements can be characterised as follows: Perishability Home cooked food needs to be supplied within a short period of time (typically 2-3 hours) and on time so as to ensure non-perishability of the food items at the time of delivery; Size & easiness of handling The Tiffin box in which the food is kept is typically made of aluminium or stainless steel in which there are 4 compartment in order to keep different kinds of food items separated. The outer container is typically of particular size and water tight, which simplifies the transport and handling of dabbas with relative ease even in tough metropolitan conditions like busy road traffic and congested urban rail systems experienced typically in Mumbai; Special conditions - Adverse weather conditions like extreme heat or heavy rainfall may delay the delivery and to a certain extent there might be special problems like vehicles/rail accidents; Fragility - The dabbas used by the dabbawalas are made of aluminium casing and therefore the food within is compactly arranged within a compartmentalised lunch box. Even so, it needs to be ensured that the dabbas are not dropped or overturned as the food may get mixed. The efficiency of the dabbawalas ensures complete customer satisfaction as there is no delay. The service is continuously innovated by offering new services, while riding on their core strength of on-time and reliable delivery services. A few examples of their innovation are introducing a new express delivery service (pick-up at 11am), linking with groups of housewives to cook and supply dabbas for customers who prefer home-cooked food, work with marketing agents and media houses to physically distribute promotional items, along with the dabbas, to the offices or residences of their customers (Pathak 2010). The standard dabbas used for the meal delivery have slowly given way to more elaborate and colourful packaging, and the system has cleverly evolved to accommodate the request of customers who want their meals to be delivered to them in a fancy and appetizing manner (Percot 2005).
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5.5 FINANCIAL ASPECTS

Each customer of the dabbawala system is charged between Rs. 400 to Rs. 700 per tiffin per month for the service depending on customer requirements, transport distances and economic condition of the customer. Customised offerings (larger lunch box, special diet requirements, etc.) are charged separately. The customer only needs to invest upfront, a token sum to purchase the tiffin box to store the meals. Further negotiation of the price and collection timings will be done between the customer and team leader. Generally, lower income customers are charged lesser than others. It is up to the team leader to decide on the final rates based on his judgement and consideration of the economic status of the customer. The main cost items are wages, rail passes and rail freight charges. The members use the rail network which charges Rs. 100 per crate and Rs. 180 per member per month. Each member is paid a reasonable compensation of between Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 7,000 per month net wages after meeting all expenses like railway monthly passes and capital costs incurred for purchase of carts, crates and bicycles. The exact wages for each dabbawala varies according to the total customers serviced, services provided and total origin-destination distance. There are no large investments in the services of the dabbawala delivery system, since it is primarily a labour intensive service. When a member is recruited he is obliged to buy his own uniform and purchase a bicycle for himself. The bicycle is used by the member himself for pickup and delivery. All these contribute to low operational costs and hence a reasonable price for the end customer. New recruits are initially hired on a salary. After evaluating their performance they are offered membership (shareholders) of the trust and assigned to one of the groups by the member who introduced him to the group. Each dabbawala is guaranteed a monthly income and employment for life. As there is no retirement age, he may work as long as he is physically fit. Each team is financially independent and serves its own customers without hampering the interests of the others, but work together in the delivery process. Each member pays Rs. 15 per month as contribution to the welfare fund which acts as an insurance cover. The association provides various services to its members from this welfare fund, including loan facilities for emergencies, education expenses for members children, health care, etc. The balance of the savings goes to a charitable trust. Other sources of revenue come from marketing. Realising the large customer base to which the dabbawalas are in direct contact with, a number of business enterprises use the dabbawalas to market their products and services by sending flyers to the end customers through the dabbawalas. Donations from philanthropic institutions and fees received from public speaking and presentations also constitute other revenue sources. A quarter of the
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total revenues received from marketing activities go the Trust, while the rest are equally distributed amongst all the dabbawalas.
5.6 TRANSFERABILITY POTENTIAL OF THE SELECTED GOOD PRACTICE

This section explores the potential transferability of the business model of the dabbawala system to other cities and other companies. The following conditions are identified as unique to the Mumbai dabbawala system which has sustained the service for so many years: Topography: The Dabbawala service has evolved in the context of Mumbai city whose topography is linear. At the origin it is dispersed over a large area. At the destination it is concentrated on a small geographical area. The traffic pattern is characterized by low volume spread over a large area to high volume spread over a small area. The linear geographic dimensions such as seen in Mumbai city is an important factor when considering transferability of this particular service; Flexible infrastructure: The main mode of transportation employed in the dabbawala logistics service is the regular and reliable public transportation system in the city i.e. the suburban railway system. The entire operational area serviced by the Dabbawalas is connected by a well developed rail infrastructure; Inexpensive public transportation system: Mumbai suburban rail services are inexpensively priced. This keeps the cost low and hence affordable price to the customers. Lower price induces volume and scale economies; Culture: Mumbai is a very cosmopolitan city where people with diverse cultures, backgrounds and food habits migrated. The diversity of food habits makes it impossible for local restaurants, canteens or fast food centres to fulfil specific tastes and needs of each employee in a same place. A lot of Indians employing the tiffin box service feel that getting home cooked food in the office is a link between work and home that a lot of dabbawalas customers express as a heartening feeling. A lot of people in the workplace insist that it is stressful to adjust to other people (Percot 2005). In addition stressful and long hours of work coupled with long travel in congested traffic conditions are a norm which induces fatigue. A lot of employees feel that they have insufficient time to spend with their families and rest at home. For them the delivery of lunch boxes and eating home cooked food forms a bonding with their home and family members. Eventually some consider that hiring a dabbawala is also a question of status. Mumbai people agree that nothing is better than home food as there is no pleasure or dignity to eat standing in front of everybody;
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Service characteristics: The dabbawala service caters to the most basic and perpetual demand of delivering home prepared ethnic food to Indian middle income executives working in Mumbai. This market segment is expected to exist for a long time to come. The only threat to its existence is the changing food habits of the customers, but this is surely expected to be slow; Density and relative locations of the origin-destination: The distribution of the origin and destination points plays an important role in the selection of a delivery system. Figure 11 shows 3 typical delivery organizations ideally suited for each of the spatial distribution of origin-destination pairs.
Figure 11: Scarcity/Density of Origins/Destinations affects the choice of delivery organization Source: (Balakrishnan & Teo 2004) In the postal delivery system, the origins and destinations are well spaced out within the region. In such systems a hub and spoke system is typically employed. In Warehouse retailer delivery systems, goods from the central warehouse need to be delivered to retailers spread over the region wherein a zoning system is typically used. In this customers are grouped into zones, each served by a sub-delivery unit. In the meal delivery system in Mumbai, origins are spread out over a region with 70% of destinations clustered near a central area.
After considering the factors favourable to Dabbawala services, the following part explores conditions for transferability of this best practice to other urban logistics operations: Efficient and cheap (public) transport system:
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The city needs to have an efficient and reliable (public) transportation system as its backbone. An appropriately extensive network of the (public) transport system along with an inexpensive charging system is a prerequisite to develop similar logistics services in other cities. Homogenous, regular and perpetual demand: For transferring this best practice to the movement of other products, the products service demand requires to be regular and perpetual (such as food for customers). Moreover packaging of the product preferably needs to be homogeneous or standardized and handy for efficient stacking in larger crates/containers as well as for fast loading/unloading movement. Adaptation to local conditions: The practicability of employing best practices from other case studies to ones own logistics services needs to be thoroughly analysed and local constraints and advantages have to be leveraged in an innovative way. Much of the success of the dabbawalas logistics system is attributed to its ability to evolve continuously to adapt to local conditions rather than blindly following best practices imported from elsewhere. This is evident in the coding system used to track the flow of dabbas within the entire delivery network. While bar codes are common to modern day delivery system, its high cost (relative to cost of the service) and the environment (manned by illiterate workers) meant that the system was incompatible to the local conditions. The dabbawalas hence chose to evolve a coding system that is understandable and simple to its workers, fully recognizing the fact that its strength lies on its cheap labour and committed workforce. Since the system is operated by strictly controlled but loosely linked groups, each group is allowed a certain amount of flexibility in personalizing the coding system. Thus the mukadam (the manager of each operating group) can personalize some colors to differentiate the dabbas pertaining to each of his group members. Standard operating procedures: Over the years the system has evolved an outstanding standard operating procedure which ensures certainty in the operational model at any stage. Each members role is clearly articulated and the codification system is perfect and well understood by all members. Members are empowered to task execution. Fair business practices (equal compensation) and joy of work, pride in the activity and fun mixed with work break the monotony of the standard working procedure in this system.
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Customer Focus: Although the dabbawala service functions in a monopoly market environment, the service is priced low to attract and retain relevant customer segment and base. The process is capable enough to fulfill the assurances of service quality. The dabbawala association has elevated the objective of their business as an opportunity to serve society by provision of food, which for them is a higher motivating factor than an operational objective as a transport logistics support to deliver lunch boxes. Customer cooperation: The dabbawalas do not wait for lunch boxes if they are not ready when they arrive for collection at residences. The household understands the need to be punctual to support the functioning of these services and extends appropriate co-operation. Such understanding between the client and service provider is crucial for the effectiveness of the logistics service system.
5.7 OTHER ASPECTS

A number of elegant management practices are unique to the dabbawala system and can be adapted to local conditions in other urban logistics systems across the worlds. They are as follows: Organisational Structure The Mumbai Dabbawala system is organized as a cooperative structure to symbolize equality and fairness. The employees of the dabbawala delivery system constitute the main stakeholders of this logistics system. It has a three tier organizational structure which is readily scalable based on business opportunity and volume. The three tiers are: 1. Panch Committee or Governing Council comprising of President and secretary top level; 2. Muqaddams (team leaders or supervisors) middle level; 3. Gaddis or Dabbawalas lower level. Each dabbawala carries around 30 tiffin boxes. There are totally around 5,000 dabbawalas with 800 member teams operating in different areas within the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Each team has between 5-7 dabbawalas depending on the service demand in their area of operation. Each team is supervised by a Muqaddam (team leader). The Muqaddams role is to
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supervise sorting of dabbas, to keep payment records, settle disputes, search new customers and train new dabbawalas. Each group is financially independent but works together in the delivery process. Each group serves its own interests without hampering the interests of the other. The compensation is same at the group level following the philosophy of equal work equal pay. This structure is an optimal way of delivering centralized planning and decentralized execution of business services. This structure also ensures attention to detail and decentralization at the team level. As each member is associated with a fixed route and the revenue opportunity is well integrated with the organizational structure. The Governing Council holds meetings on the 15th of every month to discuss disputes, operational issues and business policies. Muqaddams and Dabbawalas are entitled to attend the meetings. Human Resource Management Practices The organization is built on a sense of pride of providing food to their customers and belonging to the organization as they hail from the same ethnic group and wear a uniform while at work. Mutual respect for individuals and empowerment are reinforcing features. This is a great motivating factor to consistently improve their performance. After the delivery of lunch boxes, the members break away from work to enjoy leisure time. There is 15 days forced holiday every year to visit their family members in their villages. Members are expected to conduct themselves to earn respect from public. Members are motivated by a strong ethical work culture that is held strongly in their community. The code of ethics is based on the following precepts: Work is worship; Serving people is serving God; Time is money; Unity is power.
These principles motivate the members to excel in their work and provide a feeling of contentment, security, bonding and happiness from their activities.
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6 EVALUATION OF THE GOOD PRACTICE

6.1 INTRODUCTION
Section 5 dealt with the analysis of the business model and operating procedures of the Mumbai dabbawala system. From this analysis, the potential for transferability of the dabbawala system to other cities and other products in freight logistics system was explored. As a follow-up to that analysis, the present section evaluates the impacts holistically of the dabbawala system from 4 different perspectives namely, transportation, local economy, environment and society.
6.2 SPECIFIC URBAN FREIGHT DATA COLLECTED

With regard to the specific good practice, both quantitative and qualitative data was collected for the purpose of the Dabbawala case study. The dabbawala system has been popular in India and gained recognition worldwide after being awarded the Six Sigma title as a best practice in urban logistics in India. Since then, it has been quoted as a best practice of urban logistics in the Indian context. As a result a number of news articles, websites, reports, publications, books, presentations and journal papers have been available. The dabbawala system has been extensively written about from diverse perspectives (organisational, operational management, economics, socio-cultural, anthropological, glamour etc.) to identify its success factors and unique working model. Therefore a thorough literature review was carried out as the first step in data collection. Secondly, the dabbawala organisation was contacted and (open ended) interviews were held with key members of the Trust to gather information of its history, work culture and present challenges. The author also travelled with one of the dabbawalas in Andheri region for collection of dabbas from the residences and observed the sorting activities to gain firsthand experience of the business processes. Thirdly, Mumbai city development plans, Comprehensive Transportation Study and news articles on urban transport were collected to understand the strategic development of the city. Interviews with transportation specialists within the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) were conducted to gather information about the problems, measures and status of transport projects in Mumbai. These formed the main sources of data for this case study.
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6.3 IMPACTS
6.3.1 Transport impacts In this subsection the impact of the dabbawala system on Mumbai city and its citizens is explored in terms of travel times, goods volumes and delivery system efficiency. Travel times The dabbawala logistics system use walking, bicycles and suburban trains as the 3 modes of collection, transport and delivery of the dabbas to their customers. The last mile i.e. from railway station to the customer in the CBD area is transported by using handcarts. Mixed traffic in Mumbai roads to a large extent aggravate congestion problems in the CBD areas during peak hours. As common road space is utilised by the dabbawalas during morning peak hours for the movement of the dabbas. This induces congestion especially near the railway station. On the other hand, dabbawalas are instrumental in reducing traffic congestion if seen from another perspective. If dabbawalas were to employ motorised vehicles in the CBD area for pickup and delivery, it could further aggravate congestion and contribute to slower movement of traffic during peak hour traffic. This would also add to the problems of on-road parking issues which would ultimately aggravate the traffic congestion levels on major arterial roads. Time restrictions on heavy goods vehicle movements in most CBD areas would force them to employ light commercial vehicles for delivery that would increase the number of trips or number of vehicles causing more road congestion. For example, if 15-20% of the employees in a commercial building within the CBD area were to employ tiffin box delivery system, this would reduce the number of employees travelling out of their work places for lunch, thereby, proportionally reducing mobility of people and vehicles during lunch hours on working days. Although no surveys have been conducted to verify the hypothesis, the authors are convinced that it could have a positive impact to society by reduction of the amount of private vehicle trips, vehicle-kilometres and overall travel times in the CBD areas. This ensures that workers and employees are well on time for duty in the afternoon after lunch hours contributing to the man-hours on the job. Goods volumes The dabbawala system is scalable to the changing demand for this service.
As sorting, handling and transport of tiffin boxes are done manually, manpower forms the main resource for adapting production capacity. Scalability of the dabbawala service is ensured by a well developed apprentice program that ensures adequate personnel or slack
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capacity to service is available at all times to cater to sudden changes in demand. Incase the demand drops, the apprentices are temporarily laid off who then seek other employment sources during slack periods. Delivery system efficiency The dabbawala system is greatly dependent on Mumbais suburban rail system for operation and punctuality, without which the main haulage of tiffins would not be possible and the delivery system would be non-functional. The last-mile delivery to the final destination is relatively slow. Although one could argue that it could have be even slower if vehicles were used in its place, because of the low average peak hour vehicle speeds (16-17km/hour) and difficulties in flexibility and manoeuvrability imposed by road restrictions and parking for commercial vehicles within the CBD area.
6.3.2 Economic impacts After discussing the impacts on transportation, this subsection throws light on the economic impacts of the dabbawala system on public and private actors namely, Mumbai city and citizens and companies. To city and citizens: The employment of public transportation and non-motorised modes of transport (walking and bicycling) for the last mile collection and deliveries, contributes to drastic reduction of operational costs in the dabbawala delivery system. These cost savings are transferred to the end customer. This makes the service attractive for the lower middle class employees who constitute the target market segment for the tiffin box delivery services in Mumbai. The use of hand carts for last mile deliveries in the CBD areas allow the dabbawala system the increased manoeuvrability in negotiating narrow lanes and byroads in addition it helps them to temporarily park at the building that needs to be serviced, thus contributing to efficient and timely delivery system. This would have been otherwise difficult as lack of parking areas, road congestion and traffic regulations within CBD areas would deter the efficient delivery or collection of tiffin boxes. Another advantage is that the delivery space required (in area on the road) for the hand carts is smaller than for a motorised vehicle carrying an equal number of dabbas.
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The dabbawala services have contributed to the positive image of the city. The uniform 41 wearing dabbawalas are a common site to see during working days in Mumbai city and have become a symbol of the megapolis. Their humble and friendly nature is endeared by the majority of Mumbai citizens. Their widely publicised interactions with VIPs such as Prince Charles and Richard Bransen have gained them international fame and recognition. These publicised events have attracted curiosity and admiration from people not just in Mumbai and India but also across the world. The dabbawala service is recognised as an outstanding example of service delivery and is the most talked about Indian example of excellence in logistics operations. Several academic institutions routinely invite dabbawala representatives to make formal presentations to compliment and include their case study in their coursework. Also, senior management of many Indian businesses introduce dabbawala system as a case study in their meetings and reviews to motivate their managers towards adopting world class systems. The dabba system has enhanced the employment opportunities for illiterate and semiilliterate people in the informal employment sector in Mumbai. The dabbawala system offers sustainable means of livelihood, economic security and the feeling of legitimacy to its members, mainly consisting of migrants from rural areas from the Pune region. To companies: The virtue of using the existing public transport system as the main transport mode, low wage structure and manual operations has greatly reduced the overhead costs, operational costs, logistic complexity and management costs. The fleet used in this system consist of low cost modalities (i.e. bicycles), which makes the investment costs relatively low. The dabbawala system is used by many consumer product companies and media services as a marketing means to launch new products or promote existing products and services with a particular market segment. This forms a new source of revenue for the dabbawalas while is a relatively cheaper and simpler means of targeting specific market segment for companies.
6.3.3 Environmental impacts Due to the use of non-motorised means of transport for freight logistics activities, the dabbawala system does not contribute directly to the pollution in the city of Mumbai. In this
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White shirt and pant plus a small white cap popularized by Nehru, the first prime minister of India are the traditional dress code of the dabbawalas.
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section, the environmental impacts of the dabbawala logistics system on the different stakeholders are explored. To city and citizens: As described earlier, the use of environmental friendly vehicles in the full logistics chain has a tremendous positive environmental impact on the city and its citizens. As no motorised vehicles are used for this logistics system, fuel consumption and hence direct emissions such as such as CO2, CO, HC, NOx, PM and SOx from their activities are totally eliminated, although indirect emissions from use of trains could be included in their carbon footprint. The logistics system also has a positive impact by reduction of vehicular noise related pollution. Dabbawalas sing devotional songs in chorus during their suburban train journeys as a means of breaking the monotony of work, as well as for entertainment and spiritual progress. Although loud and noisy for some commuters, the melody and rhythm of the devotional songs are liked by majority of the co-passengers that travel in the same train. To companies: By far, the dabbawala system is a best practice also in terms of its environmental friendly image because of its zero emission activities, at least directly. Since the lunch box delivery system is one of its kind in Mumbai, the positive image as environment friendly service matters little in attracting or retaining its customers. Moreover, road traffic regulations and pollution norms imposed by the authorities have no impact on the dabbawala activities as they do not operate motorised vehicles.
6.3.4 Social impacts The dabbawala service impacts society in many ways. This subsection elaborates on the social impacts of this delivery system on city, its citizens, companies and employees. To city and citizens: A majority of commuters in the suburban railways in Mumbai during the peak hours are familiar with the dabbawalas and their activities. A majority of the regular commuting public is tolerant to the inconveniences caused by them in the already overcrowded overstretched suburban rail transport system. Over a period of time the Dabbawalas have become an essential component of modern Mumbai. Dabbawalas deliver the dabbas by hand carts in Mumbais CBD areas. These handcarts are pushed by a number of dabbawalas at the side of roads and streets leading to their customers. As the hand carts are pushed at slow speeds, the risk of injury to pedestrians from
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collision with the hand carts is inconsequential. The road space is also preferred to footpaths, because the footpaths are poorly maintained. Also a number of obstructions on footpaths from street hawkers and pedestrian flows restrict the free movement of these carts A number of advantages of employing the dabba service by its customers are recorded from various surveys conducted in different studies. At first sight it would seem logical that office going people carry their own tiffin boxes themselves to work. However, knowing the travel conditions in suburban trains during peak hours in Mumbai it is easier to understand the difficulty involved in holding a tiffin box in addition to a briefcase that most employees use to take with them (Percot 2005). Secondly, the dabbawala offers a link to home for its customers that are mainly constituted of lower middle class and middle class people. A lot of its customers travel and work long hours and therefore find inadequate time to spend with their family. For them, the dabbawala service is an actual link with home as it not only offers home cooked food but also is used as a letter box to communicate written information and messages inserted inside the tiffins between family members at home and workplace. By delivering to each employee this tiffin filled with home cooked food, dabbawalas cater to individual tastes of an estimated 200,000 customers in a megapolis city such as Mumbai where the diversity of Indian food habits is difficult to cater to in restaurants. Also the high cost of living makes it unaffordable for many to eat outside regularly. For many, the diet restrictions are a reason for people to employ the dabba service. To companies/employees: The dabbawala profession was perceived as transitory employment in the hope of subsequently obtaining a job in the organised sector. This notion is however no longer present in the dabbawalas minds. Although it is often someones choice which determines entry into the profession, the dabbawalas are nevertheless lucky to get into the informal sector as this is also not always simple. The dabbawala service has a positive impact on society as it has provided a source of stable livelihood, job security and means of economic independence in the informal sector to atleast 5,000 members at any given time. Their traditional Maharashtrian uniform is for them the symbol of their community. Numerous ceremonies are organised such as common prayers in Mumbai temples, annual pilgrimages or music festivals where they reaffirm their solidarity and contribute to unity of the group. A 15-day forced holiday per year is imposed on each member to visit his hometown. Members express pride in having devised this system when they were illiterate. A few others acknowledge advantages in this work are independence, freedom as well as comfort and support by working amongst a network of family members.
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The job for each dabbawala is specified to collect, transport and distribute tiffin boxes of upto 30 customers in a pre-assigned geographical area every day for 25 working days in a month. This is physically demanding and strenuous job as each member should be able to carry 30 tiffin boxes (which could weigh up to 100 kg) on their head and walk 2-3 km effortlessly. The work hours are between 8.30 am to 5.00 pm with an appropriate rest period of 2.5 hours. They travel in the train along with lunchboxes every day. The regular travel by dabbawalas on over-crowded suburban local trains is also an occupational hazard. The sorting and loading operations are time bound. They are carried out in public spaces and are usually congested. Women are discouraged from employment in this delivery system because it involves hard manual labour and the employees have to face tough working conditions. Since the road space is preferred by the dabbawalas to footpaths, there is relatively more danger (speeding vehicles and errant drivers) to the safety of dabbawalas. A number of accidents have been reported which have led to injuries of some dabbawalas and even death. However, this job has also positive sides. The members are never laid off unless they get sick or meet with an accident or retire. This is not commonly seen in the informal employment sector or in any private sector in India. Though the members have been living in the city for years, they persist to claim their rural origins which contribute to their feeling of unity and identity.
6.4 IMPLEMENTATION OF MEASURES

6.4.1 Specific changes needed to implement measures The dabbawala system is unique, home grown model developed by a group of individuals with little or no formal education in the area of logistics. It has been unique to the city of Mumbai. Although it has been tried in other cities and the brand name used in other cities for marketing purposes, the scale of operations and size of network of the Mumbai dabbawala service network is not found in any other city in India. So, comparison of measures is not possible. There were no changes like any infrastructural changes made in Mumbai city to support the activities of the dabbawala logistics services. The business model of the Pune dabbawalas is different from that of Mumbai dabbawalas. The Pune dabbawalas complement the work of canteens by provision of a home delivery service. In Mumbai, the unique distribution system is demonstrated by the transfer of the dabba through the hands of at least 4 dabbawalas during its door to door journey. This exclusivity can be attributed to the generally linear topography of the city and the presence of the suburban railway network both of which have facilitated the creation of the delivery service.
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The dabbawala system has evolved continuously making the best use of existing infrastructure and available resources. The following measures could support the activities of the dabbawala service system: On the arterial roads in the CBD areas, it is recommended to allocate dedicated road lanes for the movement of slow traffic which could be used by the dabbawalas for safe and comfortable movement of their loaded carts within the CBD area; On the local suburban trains, a dedicated goods compartment for the dabbawalas on local suburban trains plying during the period and days of their operations (10am noon and 2pm to 4 pm) will offer comfort to the dabbawalas in their strenuous train journeys and to the other travellers; Use of information technology to market their services, attract job seekers and offer better opportunities to their workforce. The dabbawala service is registered with the JustDial local search engine in Mumbai who provide the mobile numbers of dabbawalas operating in their area. A potential customer can directly call the muqaddam and negotiate for starting of the tiffin delivery services. There is scope for further exploiting IT technology by developing and managing their own website. In addition, by participating in social networking platforms such as Facebook, Orkut, Twitter, etc. Dabbawala Trust could market their services in Mumbai Region more effectively.
6.4.2 Integration aspects Although the dabbawala service has been operating for over 100 years there has been no urban transport policy made to support their activities. It was not the citys transport infrastructure or services that supported the dabbawala system, but the dabbawala system that evolved making the best use of the local conditions and available resources.
6.4.3 Acceptability The dabbawalas are accepted as a part of Mumbai culture for the kind of invaluable service of connecting the people with their families through the means of home cooked food distribution. The dabbawalas have gained customer cooperation through trust generated over long years in the same business. The dabbawalas do not wait for lunch boxes if they are not ready at the collection points. Households subscribing to the dabba service system understand the
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importance of being punctual and thus support the functioning of the dabba service and extend cooperation. The rail commuting public is largely tolerant to the inconveniences caused by the dabbawalas in the overcrowded and overstretched suburban rail system of Mumbai. Over a period of time the dabbawala system has become an essential element of modern city of Mumbai. The dabba service system has no competition in its core business of delivering home-cooked food to its customers. Also other urban logistics businesses feel less threatened by the dabbawalas as their organization is reluctant to diversify their services to deliver other products or take up more complex delivery systems. Marketing agencies have realized that dabbawalas have personal contact with a sizable population of a particular market segment. Therefore, their services are utilized as a marketing medium for product promotions.
6.4.4 Bottlenecks/barriers The business of dabbawalas has gone through major challenges in the last few decades. A substantial customer base of the dabbawalas was lost with the closure of textile mills in Mumbai and the arrival of in-house canteens in schools and corporate office establishments. Other factors such as disposable incomes, women holding full time jobs, proliferation of nuclear families from traditional joint family structure and changes in the operating environment have eroded the customer base. This could be because of many reasons. There may be no family member at home to prepare home cooked food. Or canteen food at workplace may be attractive to the CBD employees. Changes in the dabbawala operating system have come about when business activities began to move to the new Mumbai business districts which are further inland from the rail networks in the last years. This has further complicated the already intricate distribution network. The dabbawalas have evolved to face the above challenges by adapting their business practices to the changing market conditions by continuously innovating, offering new services while riding on their core competence of on-time and reliable delivery services. Some of the innovations have been as follows: Introduction of express delivery service with a pick up at 11am; A linkage with a group of housewives to cook and supply dabbas for customers who prefer home-cooked food;
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Working with marketing agents like the brand management teams to distribute product samples alongwith dabbas to the offices; Standard dabbas given way to more elaborate and colorful packaging according to customer requirements; Advertising of the dabba service by putting stickers on the dabbas
6.4.5 Success and failure factors The noteworthy achievement of the Mumbai dabbawala logistics service has been the adaptation of their operations to the local conditions and available resources as well as innovation to provide new value added services without sacrificing core competence of reliable and punctual services on a regular basis. There are several complimentary aspects which provide exclusivity and uniqueness to the Mumbai dabbawala logistics service. The first and foremost is the business model that is based on inexpensive and reliable public infrastructure service. This coupled with the high volumes of service built over a period of time provides an unparalleled advantage to the dabbawala service system of Mumbai (Ravichandran 2005). The service has evolved over the Mumbai topography that is linear. The logistical pattern is such that the origins are dispersed over a large area while destinations are concentrated over a small geographical area. The availability of cheap labour for this activity is a prerequisite for this activity. Finally the need and preference for home based food are important contextual uniqueness specific to the Indian, particularly Mumbai population. Unless all the above unique conditions are met in other cities, it might be difficult to integrate the dabbawala delivery in another city or country in the same way as is done in Mumbai. The lesson learnt from this case study is that the each urban logistics system will have to continuously evolve over a period of time to develop customized services that best fits to its customer requirements and city profile within the constraints of available resources. One of the important characteristics of the Dabbawala business model is its scalability i.e. the property of the dabbawala system to accommodate changes in transaction volume without major changes to the system. This is possible because of an elaborate apprentice system prevalent in the organization that provides the required manpower. Secondly, the tiffin box tracking system is an inexpensive variation of the online tracking system relying on punctuality, trust and co-operation. And thirdly no capital investments are required as additional costs of the necessary equipment such as bicycle or hand cart are borne by the new member himself and therefore when he leaves the member gets to keep his bicycle. The
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size, scalable nature of operations, modular structure, customer service and negligible errors has kept competition away from this attractive business proposition. Human Resource Management practices are built on members pride in work. The members do not consider themselves as logistics providers but see the job as an opportunity to provide food to their customers which is a source of pride for them. It is a great motivating factor. This is supported by a cultural uniformity as all of them belong to the same community and the system has a well developed apprenticeship development programme. These are some of the success factors for the sustainability of the dabbawala business model for over a century. Up to the 1960s dabbawala profession was viewed as a temporary means of employment until the youth finds another job in the informal sector (Percot 2005). But this notion changed ever since the association evolved to provide job security, sustainable livelihood and a social support system for its members that have similar rural backgrounds. This social security is uncommon in the informal employment sector in India and therefore is a strong success factor for employee retention. Although the dabbawala service has been operational for more than 120 years, it has catered to a specific market segment and customer segment. The simplistic lifestyle of its members coupled with lack of formal education could be some of the reasons for the absence of enterprise and initiative to diversify their business into other commercially lucrative urban logistics markets, customer segments or into other cities. This could be treated as a sort of failure of the trust to diversify their business to other related logistics businesses.
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7 CONCLUSIONS
The report initially made an overview of India and Mumbai citys transport profile in the macro context. Existing transport infrastructure for intra-urban transport has been primarily road and suburban railways. Almost 90% of the citys population depends on the public transport system for their mobility needs. With the growth of the population, private motorized vehicles, the demand for transport and road space has grown tremendously. Public transport infrastructure has not been able to keep pace with the demand growth, which has had negative externalities such as road congestion, overcrowded trains, air pollution, high rate of accidents etc. and at a macro level dependence on fossil fuels and ultimately the health and well being of the citys population. In India, the institutional framework at the national, state and urban level is fragmented with a number of departments and agencies managing different aspects of transportation. Due to the lack of inter-departmental coordination and clear strategic policy goals, the transportation system as a whole suffers from good integration and connectivity. In the Mumbai Metropolitan Region a number of large infrastructure projects are ongoing not only to increase infrastructure capacity along the main North-South transport corridors, but also to improve north-south and east-west connectivity. Projects for alternative transport modes such as the Mumbai metro project, the Mumbai monorail project have been initiated to unburden existing public transport system. Discussions are ongoing for starting new passenger services to connect the island of Mumbai to the mainland. Although this report focuses on urban freight transport, certain aspects of the public transport system are also mentioned because the dabbawalas depend on the public transport system for their tiffin box delivery system. After a brief overview of the Mumbai citys governance structures, present problems and policy measures underway, the business model of the Mumbai Dabbawala service system was analysed. One of the remarkable achievement of the dabbawala system has been that change in the last 120 years since its inception, has not affected the success of the dabbawala system. This can be attributed to a number of success factors as listed below: The dabbawala system is based on strong value and ethics of service to society by delivering food. This is a source of motivation to its members; The delivery system has evolved a simple system to handle large operations with negligible error; The organizational model is almost flat with 3 tiers. It relies on a modular, scalable and flexible system with sufficient extra capacity;
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The services are customer centric and employee driven; Management practices are intuition based (coding system) taking the employee skills into consideration; Several factors specific to Mumbai such as cheap manpower availability, demand for home food, urban transport infrastructure and linear geography have contributed towards establishing this excellent business model based on innovative approach to satisfy a perpetual demand.
From the perspective of transferability of this best practice, we realize that the core business of home-cooked food distribution may not be a viable business elsewhere as culture plays a strong part in the demand side of the business. Even so, the delivery system could be applied to a local product with characteristics of perpetual demand and homogeneity. Transfer of management practices and operational procedures of the dabbawala system are worth exploring in other cities in the world. The first and the most critical factor in terms of transferability proposition is the utilization of relatively cheap transport system for urban logistics (e.g. bicycles, public transportation, etc.). This would allow cost reductions to make the urban logistics services attractive, which could lead to the generation of formidable business volumes over a period of time. Another important operational aspect of the dabbawala delivery model is its scalability and member driven logistic activity. The availability of additional trained personnel allows flexibility to scale up the logistics operations at short notice. Secondly, flat organizational structure and empowerment of personnel to manage their own day to day operations provides harmony, synergy and symphony. Tracking mechanism is an innovative and inexpensive variation of online tracking system which makes it inexpensive. Even so this simple codification system of tiffin boxes may be seriously constrained to handle multiple products with deliveries in many directions. A lesson learnt is to develop a tracking system that is simple, user-friendly, cheap and locally executable. This case study demonstrates that the informal sector are capable of managing a complex urban logistics system as efficiently and effectively as any other logistics company in the organized sector. The uniqueness of this urban logistics case study has been the efficient and effective utilization of Mumbais cheap public transport system (suburban commuter rail in this case) as the main mode of transport. This aspect has a potential for transferability especially in cities where public transport services are reliable, regular, cheap and with the network that is well connected.
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To replicate the dabbawala model in other cities in totality may not be practicable, because it caters to a specific market and customer segment. Therefore any urban logistics activity fully based on this would inherently have less universal transferability unless it is applied in other cities having similar linear topographies, cheap public transport system and the need to transport homogeneous products with characteristics of perpetual and regular demand.
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8 REFERENCES
Balakrishnan, N. & Teo, C., 2004. Mumbai Tiffin ( dabba ) Express, Available at: http://www.bschool.nus.edu.sg/staff/bizteocp/dabba.pdf. Chandra, H., 2006. Working Group on Urban Transport including Mass Rapid Transport System for Eleventh Five Year Plan. , 43. Available at: http://planningcommission.nic.in/aboutus/committee/wrkgrp11/wg11_MRTS.pdf. Commission, P., 2008. Civil Aviation, Eleventh Five Year Plan 2007-2012 (Volume III), Oxford University Press. FT, 2008. GDP growth: Surat fastest, Mumbai largest. Economy Section, Financial Times. Available at: http://www.financialexpress.com/news/gdp-growth-surat-fastest-mumbailargest/266636/. Huschebeck, M., 2001. BEST Urban Freight Solutions Deliverable D1.1. Contract, (March), 114. Jampani, S. & Dutta, S., 2004. Mumbais DabbawalasAn entrepreneurial success story. Entrepreneurship, 42. Mahias M.C., 1999. Manger en Inde. Partage et transaction. In Histoire et ethnologie du repas. Paris, pp. 347-369. Mallik, U. & Mukherjee, D., 2007. Sigma 6 Dabbawalas of Mumbai and their operations Management - An Analysis. The Management Accountant, 42(5), 386-388. Mumbai, T., 2003. Vision Mumbai - Transforming Mumbai into a world-class city. A Summary of Recommendations. Available at: http://www.bombayfirst.org/pdf/McKinseyReport.pdf. Pandit, S., 2007. Dabawalas: Lessons For Building Lasting Success Based On Values, New Delhi: McGraw-Hill Education Pvt. Ltd. Pathak, G., 2010. Delivering the Nation : The Dabbawalas of Mumbai. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 33(2), 235-257. Percot, M., 2005. Dabbawalas , Tiffin Carriers of Mumbai : Answering a Need for Specific Catering 1 1 . Home food for office lunch, Paris, France. Available at: http://hal.inria.fr/docs/00/03/54/97/PDF/DABBA.pdf. Phatak, V., Pendharkar, S. & Patkar, V., 1999. Regional Plan for Mumbai Metropolitan Region 1996-2011, Mumbai: Planning Division, MMRDA. Available at: http://www.regionalplanmmrda.org/. Quien, A., 1997. Mumbai ' s Dabbawalla Omnipresent Worker and Absent City-Dweller. Economic And Political Weekly, 32(13), 637-640. Raghuram, G., 2000. Integrated Transport, India Infrastructure Report 2001 S. Morris, Oxford University Press. Available at: http://3inetwork.org/reports/IIR2001/iir7.pdf.
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Ravichandran, N., 2005. World Class Logistics Operations: The Case of Bombay Dabbawallahs, Ahmedabad. Available at: http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/publications/data/2005-0901ravichandran.pdf. Schoemaker, J. et al., 2006. Quantification of Urban Freight Transport Effects I. Presentations. Available at: http://www.bestufs.net/download/BESTUFS_II/key_issuesII/BESTUF_Quantification_of_effect s.pdf. Singh, V., Puvvada, V. & Pradeep, J., 2008. Study on Traffic and Transportation Policies and Strategies in Urban areas in India - Final Report May 2008. , (May), 114. Available at: http://www.urbanindia.nic.in/programme/ut/final_Report.pdf. Sriraman, S., Venkatesh, A. & Karne, M., 2006. Competition Issues in the Road Goods Transport Industry in India with special reference to The Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Transport Economics, (September), 148. Available at: http://www.competition-commissionindia.nic.in/Market_Studies_Research_Projects/CompletedStudies/Link_of_Study1.pdf. Stantchev, D. & Whiteing, T., 2006. URBAN FREIGHT An overview of the European research and policy, European Commission - DG Tren. Available at: http://www.transportresearch.info/Upload/Documents/200608/20060831_105348_30339_Urban_freight.pdf. TOI, 2010. Centre notifies draft share of states in national truck permit scheme. The Times of India. Available at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Centre-notifies-draft-share-ofstates-in-national-truck-permit-scheme/articleshow/5895330.cms. Unnithan, S., 2001. Delivering the Goods. India Today.
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Grant Agreement n.SCS8-GA-2009-234061 Coordination and support action (Coordinating) FP7-TRANSPORT SST.2008.3.1.4.

Start date of project: October 2009

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

5.5 5.6 5.7 6

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

1.1 OBJECTIVE OF THE REPORT

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

1.2 SCOPE AND METHODOLOGY

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

1.3 REPORT STRUCTURE

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

Figure 1: Structure of the Report

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

2 OVERVIEW OF INDIA AND THE CITY OF MUMBAI

Figure 2: Map of Asia1

http://www.justmaps.org/maps/asia/ Retrieved 17 August 2010

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

Figure 3: Country Map of India2

http://www.mapsofindia.com/ Retrieved on 17 August 2010

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

Source: The World Factbook (www.cia.gov) http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/profiles/India.pdf Retrieved 17 August 2010

http://www.censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/India_at_glance/glance.aspx Retrieved 17 August 2010 http://www.australiannews.net/story/366072 Retrieved 17 August 2010

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2010/01/weodata/weorept.aspx?sy=2007&ey=2010&scsm= 1&ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.&br=1&c=534&s=NGDPD,NGDPDPC,PPPGDP,PPPPC,LP&grp=0&a=&pr.x=81&pr .y=8 Retrieved 17 August 2010

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/SOUTHASIAEXT/Resources/DPR_FullReport.pdf August 2010

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

http://www.economywatch.com/indianeconomy/export-import.html Retrieved 17 August 2010

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

Urban freight data collection in the country

http://www.worldbusinessculture.com/Business-in-India.html Retrieved 17 August 2010

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

http://www.cyberabadpolice.gov.in/Acts%20and%20Laws/MV%20ACT.pdf Retrieved on 30 August 2010

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

National permit of goods vehicles

Goods truck with sleeping berth to spare driver

http://maharashtra.gov.in/english/homedept/transport/permit.html Retrieved on 13 August 2010

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

Kalyan & Dombivali 4%

http://www.frizair.com/pdf/octroi_list.pdf Retrieved on 15 August 2010

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

Urban freight transport fleet

General delivery characteristics (receivers)

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

Indicator category Home delivery

Collected in India (Yes / No) No No No Yes No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes No No No No

Contribution economy Environment

Employment % in transport and logistics Energy use

Accidents and casualties in urban freight transport

2.2 URBAN FREIGHT IN MUMBAI

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

Figure 5: Location of Mumbai in India14

http://www.urban-age.net/10_cities/_data/_FIC/FIC_MBI.html Retrieved 11 August 2010

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study

Figure 6: Greater Mumbai Metropolitan Region Map15

http://www.mmrdamumbai.org/ Retrieved on 12 August 2010

TURBLOG D3.9: Urban Logistics practices Mumbai case study