The previous version of the fare card has seen over 13,562 downloads since I put it up in April (this is just counting the PDF file of the Mumbai version, the JPEG of the same saw 6,415 downloads, the Thane PDF and JPEG saw 2,301 and 1.364 downloads respectively, before I unlinked the files). This version is as per the 11th October 2012 revision. Click on any of the two (now more finger friendly) buttons below to download the JPEG or PDF versions of the revised cards for Mumbai . I’ll be creating a Thane version also, depending on the response here. Do read the text below also, in case you want to know why the things are the way they are on this version. Also, do give the Facebook page a like to keep track of updates, or follow me on Twitter.
This year has seen two revisions of the auto fares in Bombay. This added a new layer of complication to creating a revised version with the updated fares. Some rickshaws had by this time converted to the digital meter with the previous revision, so this meant that there would in fact be two sets of fare cards, one for the regular old mechanical ones and another for the electronic ones.
I hope that this particular version doesn’t have to see much use; that all the meters get changed to the newer digital meters with the right calibration which would mean we’d no longer have to use these fare conversion cards to figure out the right fare.
I knew I was not going to make two separate versions for each (mechanical and digital) mode because there’s nothing less convenient than having to fumble through a bunch of files and select the right one while in a hurry to take the meter reading and pay up. Worse still, there’s the possibility of picking the wrong file and read the meter wrong and getting into a fight with an unsuspecting auto-rick-driver.
At first, I thought I’d let the old mechanical meter readings remain, and only add the distance in kilometres along with it for the digital metres. All digital metres show a distance reading along with the fare, so this should have worked. However, that would be half the information and could possibly lead to further confusion with what was on the meter and what was on the fare card itself.
With the addition of two extra columns for the digital meter reading and the distance in kilometres I think this list has gotten quite cluttered, but I wouldn’t want to remove any information from this because I think it’d be a deficient list. The digital meter reading is set in red so that it connects directly with the digits on the electronic meter.
The source of the data for these cards was the Maharashtra Motor Vehicles Department website.
I noticed a bunch of odd discrepancies in the numbers (in some cases the “old fare” on the digital meters was shown different from the official numbers from the April ’12 revision, errors of 50paise that added up towards the end from the 20km mark), but I’ve transcribed the fares exactly the way they are on the PDF files linked to the website.
It would be really nice if some of the early adopters of this could go through the entire list and check the numbers for yourself and comment at the bottom if (or even if you don’t) find any errors, not only will this see to a more accurate fare card for your own use, but it’ll also let potential users know that the numbers have been checked by more eyes than my own and is in fact all in order.
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