Tower Envy?
Published by Yazad Jal September 17th, 2004 in EnvironmentIf you skip the party crap, Bombay Times sometimes comes up with a gem like this. Veena Singhal of the Pedder Road Residents’ Association is concerned about the impact a new 47 storey tower will have on civic amenities in the area. Her two major areas of concern are a) water and b) traffic congestion.
On water:
…the tower will worsen the area’s water shortage. The new tower’s high-speed pumps will suck up its share of water, depriving the area’s other buildings that have old equipment.
The problem here is not the new building “sucking up” a share of other people’s water, but the faulty way in which the Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC) supplies and charges for water. There is no user charge depending on how much water is consumed. Instead, the BMC charges a fixed water tax and supplies you with water for around 2-3 hours every day. You can take as much as you want. Making this a textbook example of the tragedy of the commons. A better system would be to set up meters either on a building level or for each individual user and charge as per the exact amount of water used. The BMC claims this is difficult to implement in South Bombay because of many old chawls. Should not be true of the swanky and posh Peddar Road. Ms. Singhal might use her time better in insisting that a fair pricing mechanism for water be put into place instead of wailing that a new building will take too much water.
Her lament on traffic congestion is
The average number of cars a family owns in Pedder Road is 2.3. The new tower will add an assumed 150 flats, which means more than 300 new cars in the area. This is at a time when 94,000 car trips are made through Pedder Road, according to an IIT report, when no new road space has been provided. 1,10,000 new cars are added to Mumbai roads every year, and most of them must travel to South Mumbai at least once a day.Moreover, the location of the building plot is on the main road. This means the addition of a stream of traffic to Pedder Road.
Another textbook example! I’ll let Garett Hardin himself answer:
Congestion on public roads that don’t charge tolls is another example of a government-created tragedy of the commons. If roads were privately owned, owners would charge tolls and people would take the toll into account in deciding whether to use them. Owners of private roads would probably also engage in what is called peak-load pricing, charging higher prices during times of peak demand and lower prices at other times. But because governments own roads that they finance with tax dollars, they normally do not charge tolls. The government makes roads into a commons. The result is congestion.
Near the end, Ms. Singhal gets into a logical loop.
Why build a tower at all? According to a Times of India report, the plot measures 5,000 metres — a large enough area for a building with lower elevation with many wings.
Does it matter if the plot has a tower or a building with a lower elevation? If there are the same number of flats, the water and traffic congestion problems will remain. The only concern might be that of geological impact as Peddar Road sits on a hill.
Notes below
1. The original article on Tragedy of the Commons was written by Garrett Hardin in Science magazine (December 1968)
2. Yes, the city is “officially” called Mumbai and it’s the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM). Bombay and BMC are still commonly used.
3. Here is something about a chawl.
4. I don’t agree with Hardin’s views on population.
13 Responses to “Tower Envy?”
- 1 Trackback on Mar 5th, 2005 at 3:37 pm
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I have not read the whole post yet, leave alone the links provided. However AFAIK you cannot “suck up” water directly from a water line. [cannot as in its prohibited]. One is prohibited to attach a pump directly to a water line. The water must fall into some sort of tank, and then you can pump the water from that tank up into another tank. That is why almost everybody has 2 tanks, one on the ground level and one on top. This reduces the threat of a powelful pump “sucking” all the water from the main line. Agreed, its not a fool proof solution, but it helps.
anya, you’re not allowed to use a “booster” pump. Ordinary pumps are okay. I’ll check with the BMC on Monday morning and update you.
Jane Jacos has a nice concept about first “attrition of the city by automobile” and later “attrition of automobile by the city”. This may not be in line with market philosophy of charging toll from whoever wants to use the road. However, it is an interesting view where she suggests that as cities like New York and Mumbai are more and more urbanized, people (rather car owners) are faced with attrition and hence will have great difficulty going around. It should be interesting to compare the outcome of both these concepts, i.e. market mechanism versus doing nothing and allow buildings (and hence cars) on vacant lands.
Yazad the reason behind favoring a lower building to a high-rise even if they have the same number of flats is a little thing called water-pressure. The higher the building the more water pressure you need for your jacuzzi on the penthouse floor - the lower the building the less water pressure (reference : any class V physics text book ;)
Ck, true, but irrelevant. That little physics lesson has an economic impact but only for those living in the new construction. What difference would it make to the neighbours (who BTW are the ones complaining)?
Yazad it also has an impact for anybody who lives down-pipe of the new construction. As you probably know (or apparently not) water pressure cannot be selective applied but has to be applied across the pipe. If somebody along the pipeline requires a lot of pressure, then the folks who live down the pipe will have less pressure.
Which is why if you’re taking a hot shower and your neighbor downstairs flushes, you are treated to an unpleasant 3 seconds of cold water.
if you’re taking a hot shower and your neighbor downstairs flushes, you are treated to an unpleasant 3 seconds of cold wate: Ck, this might be true in the States where the entire building has a common hot water pipe .. but not so in India where (mostly) everyone heats their own water. Ofcourse .. unless the neighbour flushes with hot water. ;-)
That is true Anya - the purpose was to let Yazad know a little bit about how water pipes work - one persons use affects anothers - but unfortunately, as in other cases, annoying things like physics get in the way of Yazad’s brilliant plans ;).
Now if only the BMC would hire Yazad as technician in place of all those people who have years of experience in ugh …engineering or some such irrelevent discipline who keep bringing up all these annoying concepts like gravity and pressure into an intellectual discussion ;)
i would like to ask u that bldgs above 100 years are going to get renovated ,so is B I T chawl nos 18 new nagpada .is under BMC and we have not received any notice regarding the repairing of bldg.so,how can we get the information from BMC so please let us know and our bldg is in a danger position so kindly do the needful.
Can any body can tell me how many vehicles are there on Mumbai road?
Personal car-
Service car-
Three wheeler (auto Rickshaw)-
Public Bus-
Manual rickshaw (three wheeler)-
Motor cycle & Scooter-
Sukanta