Mumbai, July 29: Going someplace in Mumbai? Don’t know where it is located? What do you do? Take out the city map and chart your course? Ask friends and colleagues? Or try this: log on to the Internet and get the shortest route to your destination in under 20 seconds.
Now you can navigate Mumbai through a website designed by a team at Indian Institute of Technology, Powai. Type www.cse.iitb.ac.in/navigator on the Web. The ‘‘Mumbai Navigator’’ asks you to select place of origin and destination. Click ‘‘Get Plan’’ and voila! In front of you are some of the shortest possible ways of reaching your destination, along with the expected travelling time. The route will specify what train to take, what station to get off at and what connecting bus to catch. There are also alternatives.

It took an IIT professor to make it a reality. Dr Abhiram Ranade had suggested this as a project to one of his students in the Computer Science department. Over the years, he has worked with three students to see it through. ‘‘It was a useful thing to do, and as we worked we found it more interesting than we had anticipated,’’ says Dr Ranade. The ‘‘interesting’’ bits were problems they encountered. Like two bus stops with the same name, or that public transport never adheres to a fixed schedule.
Ranade is quick to point out that the site is not without flaws. Like the places mentioned on the list are only bus stops and train stations.
Secondly, it doesn’t include the option of using autorickshaws and taxis. Thirdly, the BEST bus information is a year or two old. Finally, the programme hasn’t yet included Harbour Line stations in its database. ‘‘We developed the programme based on the feedback we got. I guess no one near us lives on the Harbour Line,’’ grins Ranade. They hope to add this information soon. Though the programme was ready by 1998-99, it was uplinked only in 2000. Last year, it was reloaded with some modifications. ‘‘From the history of the URL requests we know that many people are using this site,’’ says M. Srikrishna, one of the students who worked on the programme. The other students were Mayur Datar and Koustubh Tilak.
Now, the problem is of maintenance. Constant updating means that someone needs to co-ordinate with BEST to keep tabs on changed timings. Any takers?