The big squeeze

The numbers are in and they are quite literally weighty. Data on obesity provided by the Hyderabad-based National Institute of Nutrition (NIN), an apex body under the ambit of the Indian Council of Medical Research, suggests that at present 33.4 per cent of Mumbai-based men are overweight while another 6.6 per cent are obese. This mean that 40 per cent of the city’s men tip the scales higher than what they ought to.

For women, the halfway mark has already been breached with 51.4 per cent of women in Mumbai heavier than they ought to be. Among women, 33.3 per cent are overweight whille 18.1 per cent suffer from obesity.

These numbers are derived from the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau urban survey carried out under the helmsmanship of Dr Avula Laxmaiah, senior deputy director, NIN. He says the numbers are alarming.

“Cases of overweight and obsese individuals, especially in urban centres like Mumbai and Delhi, are now at epidemic levels. The main reasons for the increase in these numbers are a sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy eating habits. Worryingly, it is now spreading even in rural areas and tribal communities which generally had low instances of overweight and obese persons,” Dr Laxmaiah said.

What this means is that not only are trains and buses more crowded—thanks to population growth outpacing infrastructural development—but a good part of the crowd is also overweight. A suburban train traffic survey carried out by the Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation in 2014 threw up some startling numbers. In the peak hours of the morning, there is a whopping 5,560 people inside a 12 coach train which has an ideal capacity of 3,522, an overload of almost 58 per cent. A slow train during that time carried around 4,182 passengers, coming up to an overload of 18 per cent. During the evening peak, the trains took on 5,568 passengers. A slow train will typically have around 4,573 passengers, an overload of 29 per cent. A train’s ideal capacity of 3,522 is found by as suming that for every seat in the train —there are 1,174—there will two people standing. This means any overloading above 15 per cent is excessive. Just do the math.

Now, if a large number of these people are also overweight or obese, the space they take up—seated or standing—is way above ideal. This drains on the efficiency of the trains’ operation.

The example of the Mumbai suburban system is at hand. The motor-coach of a Siemens or Bombardier rake (the one which has the traction motor and is generally the 2nd, 5th, 8th and 11th coach of a suburban train in Mumbai) when fully loaded with passengers is possibly the heaviest in the country at 81 tonnes for Siemens and 79 tonnes for Bombardier. Passenger weight makes up around 27 tonnes of the numbers.

The other coaches of a Siemens as well as a Bombardier rake weigh around 38 tonnes when empty and 71 tonnes when loaded with passengers, meaning a coach can carry passengers weighing a total of 33 tonnes.

“Despite the fact that suburban trains in Mumbai are so heavy, they are relatively efficient because they carry so many people. But if people start getting heavier, then the number of people a train goesdown and in turn reduces its energy-efficiency. Increasing obesity is definitely a concern as the same number of services will carry fewer people. That will create more problems to the commuter and cities as a whole,” explained a senior railway official.

The more worrisome part is that with a width of 3.66 metres, suburban coaches in Mumbai are already the widest in the country and making them any more bulkier might just be impossible.

In response to a query on whether the railways were geared up for design changes that would be necessitated by this ‘weight explosion’, Railway Board Member (Rolling Stock) Hemant Kumar replied, “We (the Indian Railways) work on 90 percentile anthropometric data for Indian males.” Kumar is the railway’s topmost authority on the physical structure of trains.

To put it simply, the seat dimensions of the railways conforms to the physical dimensions—also called anthropometry—of 90 per cent of Indian males. Currently the width between the arm rests of seats in the railways’ chair car coaches is 42 cm and for seats in the executive class is 50 cm.

Pradyumna Vyas, director of the Ahmedabad-based National Institute of Design, the country’s premier design agency, believes that the current designs might require a rejig for future use.

“We have done a lot of research on how accessible different seating patterns in a train are for different segments of society. But with Indians getting bulkier, a design rethink incorporating newer anthropometric data might be required,” Vyas said.

The scene inside the buses run by Mumbai’s civic transport provider BEST is much the same. Conductors agree that the number of fights between commuters for that extra inch of space on the spartan bucket seats is now more common than ever. Several routes have been redirected to have smaller, narrower midi buses in order to navigate Mumbai’s clogged roads better. Urban bus seats, including that of BEST, have to conform to the Central Motor Vehicle Rules as well Automotive Industry Standards laid down by the Automotive Research Association of India. These seat widths range from 40 cm to 43 cm for smaller and non-deluxe buses to around 50 cm for deluxe air-conditioned buses.

For the moment, at BEST, the rule-book rules. Jagdish Patil, General Manager, BEST, said, “The construction of our buses is done as per the provisions of CMVR rules which clearly provide for the dimensions of single seaters, two seaters and also the leg room and the gangway width. We have been trying to create leg room by reduc    ing seating capacity. However, no other special provisions for obese commuters has been proposed as yet.”

If that sounded dismal, the state of autorickshaws in Mumbai is much worse. With no major design change since 1977 these three-wheelers come with a standard width of 130 cm. It means that the three passengers get about 40 cm each.

Rickshaws, once powered by 145CC engines now boast the more powerful 198CC engines. However, the weight of the vehicles has also gone up. When these rickshaws had two-stroke technology and ran on petrol, their weights—sans passengers—stood at 307kg. Today, most rickshaws are four-stroke ones running on Compressed Natural Gas and weight about 385 kg. The total weight of rickshaw loaded with passengers comes to about 670 kg.

“With most of our passengers in what we call the ‘healthy’ category, it is time the width is increased by at least 9 inches so that people can sit more comfortably. About a decade ago the Autorickshaw Trade Inquiry Committee was set up to look into the design changes required for rickshaws. No one knows what happened to that,” complained Thampi Kurien who heads the Mumbai Rickshaw Men’s Union and a member on several committees studying the rickshaw trade.

But tampering with the width—currently at 130 cm—or the length—currently at 263.5 cm—of rickshaws will take away the ease with which they can make turns in the narrow Mumbai roads thus taking away their accessibility. “Simply put, it means that as people get bulkier, the necessity to ride alone in auto-rickshaws will increase. Which in turn would mean far more rickshaws on the roads,” said one transport official.

A leaner, meaner future

At the heart of all kinds of public transport is the need for speed. As the railways move towards that end, the need for lighter trains that will board more people will gain greater importance. Its likely that the new trains would feature chair cars instead of the traditional sleeper berth arrangement. The first move in this direction has already been made with the introduction of the double-decker Uday trains intended at increasing passenger capacity on busy routes. According to the Ministry of.

Railways these trains will run overnight, connecting major cities across the country; this despite the railways’ rule that all overnight journeys that take longer than 10 hours require sleeper berths.

“The railways’ Mission 2020 means we will have to carry more people in our trains than ever before. So, we will be running several double-decker trains with around 120 seats per coach as well as faster train sets—so that we can increase the total number of trips on a per day basis. For overweight commuters, chair cars would be that much more uncomfortable,” explained a top railway official.

The introduction of smaller transport vehicles such as e-rickshaws would test overweight passengers further still. This will give cities another headache to assuage. More privately-owned vehicles would compound problems since the width of most urban roads has not increased significantly. An increase in vehicles could potentially create continual gridlock.

HOW RISING WEIGHT AFFECTS COMMUTERS

• More trains carrying less people
• Increased use of private vehicles
• More solo usage of rickshaws and taxis
• Greater traffic congestion on roads
• Greater commuting discomfort due to designs based on out-dated anthropometric data