A bubble gum chewing girl with pods stuck to her ear climbs up the road near Gachibowli Junction dragging her wheeled suitcase. Stops near a cab.
“Airport?”
“₹100,” says the cab driver, and she pulls open the rear door and hops in.
A little ahead, a number of autorickshaws are parked in an orderly fashion. One young man walks in and gets into the first auto where two other gentlemen are already sitting. “Once we have five or six people, I will start. I take the commuters to Narsingi in 10 minutes,” says Anand, the autodriver from Manchirevula.
This is the everyday drama at the Gachibowli Junction where the service road and Outer Ring Road are indistinguishable.
As Shamshabad has evolved beyond a thanda (tribal hamlet) to an airport to a humming working suburb of Hyderabad, commuters are being forced to evolve their own transport solutions from Gachibowli.
There are multiple signages about the area being a no-stopping and no-parking zone. But to no avail. “This is not ORR. The toll gate for ORR is much ahead. Even two-wheeler riders can use this road and then they take the service road to reach Narsingi,” says the autodriver.
“Thousands of people commute from here. The cab drivers stop there if we stand here and if we stand there, they stop here. I click about 200 photographs which get converted into challans but they don’t seem to care. The auto drivers plead with us saying they are poor and we cannot do much,” says Vijay Kumar of Traffic Police, Cyberabad.
Even as the two traffic police officials stand, cabs slow down and stop to pick up passengers. And it is chaos with cars stopping in the middle of the road even as other drivers zip ahead to get into the high-speed roadway.
“My cab is registered with Ola. Why should I go back without passengers? I take three passengers in the cab and I drop them at the departure terminal of the airport. They are happy for the cheap ride and I make some money,” says Harsha Nayak, waiting for commuters.
His charges range between ₹100 and ₹200 for airport depending on the timing and demand. If the commuters want to go to Shamshabad, then the charges drop to ₹30 or ₹40. In contrast, the auto drivers charge ₹15 for Narsingi.
“Two or three trips a day and I am done,” says Anand, the auto driver.
“The charge for Airport Shuttle is ₹210 from Gachibowli and there is a bus every 15 or 20 minutes. Everyday, 60 to 70 passengers board the shuttle from here. People don’t want to wait if the bus is delayed. They walk ahead and get immediate transport,” informs an RTC official about the shuttle point near Telecom Nagar.
The Outer Ring Road is one of the prized infrastructure projects of the city which has changed commuting for millions.
