996.ICU

About time the revolution reaches our shores. Concerns from the 996.ICU movement most certainly apply here. There's additionally the grind from the 3+ hours of daily travel time between workplace & home in the typically over-crowded metros.

The demands for a well balanced work life (wbl) are totally justified. 955 schedule, flexi-hours, work from home, are not concepts to be just spoken of but to be put to practice. Let's work smart, live healthy & be happy!

Human Design

"What a blessing (mercy) it would be if we could open and shut our ears as easily as we open and shut our eyes. - Georg C. Lichtenberg"

So true. Many an offensive situations could be diffused by simply dropping down the earlids. In a hyper-noisy nation like ours where the chatter never dies down, earmarked (sic!) noise free zones (around hospitals, schools, etc.) wouldn't exist. There could even be earlid-downed marches to protest against the high decibel rants pushed at us from all nooks & corners of the planet.

Perhaps Kikazaru/ Mikazaru, the first macaque who prescribed to us hear no evil, would be seen jumping around like never before. Only to be reminded the very next minute by his two wise buddies of its futility. And how their respective advices have been largely ignored despite there being lids for the eyes & the mouth. Finally, we would perhaps be able to truly experience the world in the way that people who can't hear experience it, even today. So yes, I agree with Mr. Lichtenberg that it would be a real blessing!

In that same spirit, we could also do with another design change, one that might already exist in a parallel universe somewhere. Would be nice to shift humans from a 4-hourly hunger cycle to a more pragmatic 4-monthly one. No getting hungry every few hours, no snacking, no gorging, no fun (seriously)?

There'd instead be a triannual feasting day for the individual. That would be the day to celebrate, bigger than any birthday or anniversary combined. The person concerned would probably down a few hundred kilos of their favorite gourmets. Gastronomic desires fulfilled like there's no tomorrow. There really wouldn't be one for the next four months. Guests meanwhile, would be making merry - singing, dancing, & everything else - awaiting their day of feasting. 

There are stories about Indian mystics & sadhus who achieved a state of being, or were just built differently, where they didn't need any food for days together. But they seem to have gone extinct, save for some hunger artists. On the other hand, many animal species are known to feed in cycles with long fasting breaks in between. The camel for instance carries a special biological organ (the hump) to store food (fat) reserves, & can go without food & water for weeks together. In nature the concept is not so rare, a few hundred genes at play that's all.     

Yet, the impact from a triannual feeding cycle to our social structures would be unimaginable. For instance the movie screenplay where the protagonist is complaining about the paapi pet (evil stomach) would simply be gone. Hunger, malnourishment, perhaps even poverty would be over. Or is that taking it too far? Newer enterprises would no doubt emerge that would work their way to profitability around the altered version of this fundamental base human need for food. In any case, there would be a paradigm shift on our social, economic & policy frameworks all over. Our entire existence would be markedly different, & hopefully better.

Professional

Almost all definitions of the word professional have an ethical component mentioned in the definition. Yet, we are flooded by news of frauds and malpractices from organizations across sectors and geographies, run by professionals mostly having top of the line credentials.

The article "Star-studded CVs and moral numbness" provides some interesting insights, esp. from an exercise with a batch of budding professionals from a top tier management school. The authors were perhaps dealing with a relatively young lot of individuals having less exposure (typically with <3 years work experience). Had the exercise been done within the walls of the corporate war-rooms, with hardened professionals clued into the ways of the real world, the outcome would have been totally different. Forget remorse, there would be no realization of any wrong doing. Voices of protests would be snubbed or worse, shown the exit door. 

Metro Train

In a city like Delhi that's choking under air-pollution, vehicular traffic, etc. public conveyance & the metro seems like the only viable solution to the mess. For many like me, the metro is a rather convenient way to travel back & forth to work daily.

The nearest metro station from home is about half-an-hours drive which I cover via one of the connectors or in an auto. The metro ride after that is well managed & regular. At times, there are slowdowns, delayed arrivals, etc. but on the whole the Delhi metro is doing a fantastic job helping several million people travel across the lengths & breadths of the city everyday. Sharing a few thoughts on what could make the journey more comfortable for travellers in the future.

 

Peak Hours Rush, 100+% occupancy

All regulars will tell you to avoid the metro at peak/ office hours. Metro can get really full & crowded at these hours. To encourage off-peak hours travel, metro also offers travel discounts for these hours.

Interestingly, during peak hours not all coaches get equally packed. Certain coaches, typically the ones close to the staircases, are much more congested. Now if only the passengers were notified in advance about the occupancy factor across coaches of the upcoming trains, they might be able to move a little bit on the platform & board a less congested one.

This could be achieved via existing sensors on the train that capture weight, footfall, etc. or via video feeds from the on-board cameras (see references below) within the coaches. Just need to relay this feed in real-time to a screen/ dashboard on the platform (& an app) visible to the customer. These feeds needn't be super accurate, and a reasonable estimate (Low, Medium, High, Very High) of the occupancy should do. This data can also reveal other interesting insights on occupancy across days of the week, events, festivals, seasonality, etc.

Fig 1: Occupancy Across Coaches

Another observation is that typically low to medium occupancy trains follow/ trail the high occupancy ones. Perhaps there's a general tendency in people to board the first available train that shows up. On the other hand, if the feed could also show occupancy stats along with arrival timings of next two to three trains that might help the passenger to wait a few minutes & board a less congested one.

Fig 2: Occupancy & Arrival Timings

Surprisingly, the expected arrival timings of next two or three trains, fairly common elsewhere (like Singapore MRT), is not available on the monitors here. This should probably be easy to introduce right away, even if the other one with the occupancy indicator takes time.

 

Optimizing Number of Coaches

The current logic to ply trains having 6-coaches in place of 8-coaches should also be improved in the future. Perhaps to reduce costs by roughly 75% (6/8), 6-coach trains are run during off-peak hours. Invariably though, back to back 6-coach trains show up during peak hours leading to overcrowding inside the trains & long spiralling queues at the stations.

Working out the right moment to switch between a 6-coach & an 8-coach (or other smaller) variant seems like a solution to a cost (running) minimization problem while maximizing users' comfort. Key factors being peak hours timings, occupancy levels, end-to-end runtime of the train, cost/ kg to ply the trains, time to hook/ unhook additional coaches, available parking space for spare coaches and so on. Very much worth a look at by data science folks.

 

Beyond the 8-Coaches Barrier

A bigger challenge for the Metro is handling additional/ future load from a growing population. The metro stations are built for the current size of trains having at most 8-coaches. There's no way to increase this length without undertaking massive reconstruction of the platforms at huge costs, time, etc. Increasing frequency of trains is already being explored, & there's very little scope left with trains running just a few minutes apart. Improving coverage certainly helps to an extent. Beyond that the options seem limited.

Probably adding coaches to existing trains could work. These coaches would have to be either attached to the ends of the train. Since they'll be positioned beyond the platform limits, they'll have to be door-less. Entry/ exit would be from adjacent coaches positioned on the platforms having doors. Doable in theory, though the additional movement across the train aisles, etc. will pose newer engineering & security challenges. 

Another option could be to set-up each train to have two well synchronized halts per station. First halt to board coaches 1 to 6. After which the train moves forward & makes a second halt to allow boarding for coaches 6 to 12. Another idea could be to increase capacity vertically instead with double decker trains. Various practical aspects need to be figured out for fanciful ideas like these to work. But given the way we are going & growing might need to solve this very soon. Worthwhile therefore thinking of ideas, even if they seem weird today some might get applied in the future!

References: 

Counting Number of People In A Video

• RIVA/ VCA Counting
• People Counting Demonstration
• Stable Multi-Target Tracking in Real-Time Surveillance Video (CVPR 2011)
• Motion-Based Multiple Object Tracking
• Crowd Size Estimation
• Counting in Extremely Dense Crowd Images
• Algorithm to count people in a crowd
• People detection from above
• Which Algorithm is used to count the number of people in a video?