Increasing traffic and pollution are real threat to all cosmopolitan and metros in India. Lack of infrastructure and outburst of population migrating to cities is the cause for this increasing traffic. Its taking 1-2 hrs to reach Electronic city from Koramangala, Bangalore and the distance is just 14.5km. Google map says 18mins. Is the traffic driving us crazy or we are making the traffic looks crazier! Traffic congestion is the problem around the globe, even in cities like NewYork, San Francisco, Paris are facing the traffic crisis with decent infrastructure & lane culture.

The bangalore traffic made techcrunch authors too to write something to Indian entrepreneurs to start a company to control this traffic congestion. They are saying the reason behind all this congestion is ‘Rapid Urbanization”, people are moving in millions & billions to the cities, it holds good for China too, which is experiencing similar traffic problems. All major Indian cities are polluted by vehicles, road dust due to vehicles contribute 33% of air pollution in India. Cities like Bangalore, Delhi & Chennai has potential hazards and can cause asthma, breathing problems to commuters especially children can get affected quickly.

What are the solutions that people are shouting to control the traffic congestion?

* Need better infrastructure – throwing the ball on government’s court
* Increase the city limits, creating ring roads, flyovers, bridges, etc, (this will decrease the momentum of urbanization & over-crowding one particular place. (eg., Bangalore Indra Nagar, Chennai Adyar, Hyderabad Hi-Tech City (Madhapur))
* Traffic sense – omg, this is never going to happen and we are never going to drive with a sixth sense. so its better forget this option.
* Carpooling – Sharing the ride with others (instead of 1 or 2 riding the car which has the capacity of more, commuters can car pool if they are going in the same route to their workplace)

Carpool is not a newer concept in countries like US, but very niche to Indian traffic. Everyone in crowded US cities go by carpooling or better they take public transportation like subway systems, buses or trains. But in India, carpooling is not a known news among the public and very new. On all the above discussed points, we can control the traffic congestion only by carpooling which we have control, because the other factors are dominated by Govt’s action plan.

Megacarpool.com is one such site who took an initiative to control the traffic congestion by having people share their rides. Mega Carpool verifies the driver once you create an account or call/sms them. They will send the executive to collect the proofs or you can send an email from your official email address. Basically they provide both fixed and adhoc routes which caters the needs of all kind of riders. Some of the benefits of the carpooling which is mentioned in their site are: reduced green house gas emissions, carbon credits, reduced parking space.

The GUI of Megacarpool.com is better than most of the other carpooling sites in India, their presence in social networking is good & also its one of their feature that the riders can build their social networks. They have presence in twitter, orkut, linkedin, etc.