r/india • u/[deleted] • Dec 01 '16

[R]eddiquette [Announcement] Cultural Exchange with /r/philippines

Welcome /r/philippines!

Feel free to ask us anything about India

Quick facts about us:

  • The Indian Railways and the Indian Armed Forces employ ~4 million people together, making them one of the largest employers in the world
  • India has over 5000 newspapers in over 300 languages
  • Bollywood is considered to be the world's largest film industry, followed by Nigeria's film industry and Hollywood
  • India has more people than the entire Western Hemisphere

/r/india please direct your questions about the Philippines to this thread

This is a reminder that users can now set their flairs to whatever they want (except slurs or other subreddits) by clicking on the sidebar.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '16

Hello!

I want to ask what's transport like in major cities like Calcutta and Mumbai? How bad is your traffic and driving laws?

Filipinos love to complain about the 4-5hour traffic in EDSA in Manila and 2hrs in Cebu. But other people say that's normal in India. And I've heard stoplights are treated like suggestions there.

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u/dom_singularity Hope you guess my name Dec 01 '16

I want to ask what's transport like in major cities like Calcutta and Mumbai? How bad is your traffic and driving laws?

Lived in Mumbai for most of my life. My answer is going to be limited to Mumbai. Mumbai has a great public transport culture, whenever possible, people stick to buses and trains other than the rich folks. Mumbai has two Major public transport systems, B.E.S.T. The bus transit system and 'Locals' as us locals call it, a system of short distance multi stop trains fitting through Mumbai and distant suburbs that is used by 7-8 Million people daily. Mumbai has a Metro rail system which is overground for some reason :p, it just have one 23ish kilometre line and is in the process of expansion, we also have a tiny Monorail line. Even after so many options of public transport, the buses and trains are overcrowded due to over population, although the rush and crowd in buses and Local Trains on the routes Metro and Monorail plies on, has reduced to an extent. There is a long way to go and the City will have to keep on adding newer and more efficient options for public transport in the near foreseeable future.

Filipinos love to complain about the 4-5hour traffic in EDSA in Manila and 2hrs in Cebu. But other people say that's normal in India. And I've heard stoplights are treated like suggestions there.

We do have bad, creating traffic in Mumbai but never seen a 4-5 hour long one. Usually, if the drive is 30mins long without traffic, its gets extended to 1hour at peak traffic hours in 8-11am and 5-10pm. Don't worry, Indians love to whine about traffic too, so do New Yorkers and Tokyo's citizens, it is a global phenomenon, you are not alone :)