Big cities must look to choppers to decongest traffic

Imagine an urban conglomerate known for the world’s worst traffic jams. The city, with a population density of around 8,000 per square kilometre and with approximately 6 million vehicles, has one vehicle for every two citizens. The number of vehicles on its roads continues to grow rapidly while the capacity of public transport is unrelentingly stretched. It is, however, home to business elites of the country, with a large number of billionaires calling the city their home. Crime in the city is so rampant that even elites, like the CEO of a supermarket chain, have been targeted.

This could be an Asian city, say, Manila or Jakarta. But for the crime-related data nugget, this could be Bengaluru or Mumbai but it is not. This is Sao Paulo, the business capital of Brazil and the largest city in all of South America.

To fix this dismal situation, Sao Paulo looked at helicopters.

The invisible hand of the market stepped in. That led to helicopter collectives popping up in Sao Paulo. Helisolutions, a company with a business model wherein more than 100 members share the costs of purchase, maintenance, and pilot time on a fleet of copters was started. Airbus introduced Voom, an on-demand helicopter service with the objective to make helicopter services available to everyone travelling on the ground. Voom followed an asset-light model similar to Ola, facilitating it to cut its fixed costs to provide cheaper helicopter services that can be availed by the not-so-rich class. Uber too allows you to hail a helicopter with its UberCopter service. Mercedes Benz started a venture in Sao Paolo just to fund the helicopter sector.

Soon after helicopter operators established a series of flight corridors for easy services. Each corridor had an assigned altitude between 2,000-3,500 feet. To fly above 3,500 feet, permission from Sao Paolo’s Air Traffic Control system was required. Further, to decrease the load on the single ATC system, in 2004, Sao Paulo implemented a dedicated helicopter ATC system for all rotary-wing aircraft.

Thus, when the helicopter industry was booming, due to rapid urbanisation their already existing huge buildings facilitated helipad infrastructure. Sao Paulo currently has around 528 helipads. The city is said to have more than 450 helicopters, the largest number for any city in the world.

India’s big cities present a picture similar to that we see in Sao Paulo. They are relentlessly becoming more crowded and are increasingly unliveable. Much of this can be attributed to inadequate infrastructure development. Our roads are jammed, commute time has constantly increased and growth in the number of vehicles on our roads doesn’t seem to slow down while there is no significant change in our road infrastructure.

As the 2019 Tom Tom Survey of 416 cities points out, Bengaluru and Mumbai top the charts of cities with congestion. Bengaluru spends around 243 hours per year driving in rush hours while for Mumbai it is 209 hours. Economic loss on account of traffic congestion in both Bengaluru and Mumbai runs into billions of dollars. The cost of health and environment are other issues. Travelling to Bengaluru’s airport is a story of missed flights and wasted money. In Mumbai, Bandra Kurla Complex to Andheri, It takes an average of 90 minutes to travel about 12 kms during the evening rush hour.

Quite like Sao Paulo, both these cities are large hubs of economic activity. Elites of Indian industry, including many billionaires, reside in these cities. In this chaos, as with Sao Paulo, helicopters present an easy fix.

What needs to be done?

Creating the enabling infrastructure will be essential. Respective local governments and the Central government could help by setting up helipads across key locations in the city subject to environmental clearance. Industrial houses could support by creating and providing relevant infrastructure, for public use, on tall buildings, and on their campuses for example the IT companies. The Airports Authority could provide dedicated air corridors and align user charges. Public sector enterprise, Pawan Hans Helicopters Ltd as the largest player could take the lead on behalf of the government.

In a city like Bengaluru, a typical 10-minute helicopter ride to the airport could cost, as per current estimates, some Rs 4,000 per person. This fare will most likely come down if adequate volumes kick in. With 9 to 10 passengers per trip, it is immensely viable for helicopters. While heli-taxi ventures have been launched in the past, CEOs and VCs could incubate and support UberCopter equivalent enterprises. Large corporates by providing the initial customer base could help such new businesses stand on their feet. This handholding will create a long term win-win solution for the city and its people.

In no way less important will be for the DGCA to look at helicopters with a fresh pair of eyes, not with those used for fixed wing operations.

This presents a quick fix to some of the traffic congestion issues in both Bengaluru and Mumbai. More importantly, it gives a much-needed fillip to the stunted helicopter industry. It will create a new business line generating revenue, employing thousands in addition to the economic cost saved on account of improved connectivity.

A successful model in Bengaluru and Mumbai could be the template for businesses in other cities and in remote parts of the country where the government has enthusiastically promoted regional connectivity schemes.

(The writer is a public policy consultant at Chase India.)