Latest statistics from Maharashtra’s Regional Transport Office (RTO) indicate that these ‘creatures’ are invading the state and our city like never before.
Those big, mean, yellow machines are usually called excavators, forklifts, cranes and diggers, but in this part of the world, they are simply known as JCBs, though no one knows what that stands for.
Latest statistics from Maharashtra’s Regional Transport Office (RTO) indicate that these ‘creatures’ are invading the state and our city like never before.
When Staffordshire-born Joseph Cyril Bamford, owner of JCB, the biggest construction-equipment company, begun manufacturing the present generation tippers and excavators under his initials, little did he know that the abbreviation would be more popular than his name in India and its financial metropolis Mumbai.
“Mumbai is in the middle of a huge transition. New towers are coming up every 500m, new modes of transport, like the Monorail and the Metro are being laid, and mills and chawls are being brought down for multi-storied complexes. The key equipment for construction is heavier and faster modes of transport: excavators, trailer cranes, dumpers and rollers,” a senior transport department official said.
Latest statistics from Maharashtra’s transport department state that Maharashtra has made a jump from 3,78,873 of these vehicles in 2000 to 8,45,617 in 2009, which means an addition of more than four lakh vehicles in nine years. The machines are classified under the category of ‘articulated and multi-axle vehicles’.
In Mumbai, there are as many as 16,023 of these machines, with 9,196 in south Mumbai alone, 4,735 in the western suburbs and 2,092 in the eastern suburbs. Additionally, 24,061 machines registered in Thane, 17,075 in Navi Mumbai, and 3,886 in Dombivli and Kalyan are working at various sites in the city. Table 16-A in the RTO statistics chart shows that these machines are growing at the rate of 10.48% in Maharashtra.
“They are usually busy working at the construction sites, so pollution is limited to these places,” said Avinash Goel, a contractor at Raj Constructions in south Mumbai. Sources said the machines are in demand and their cost is Rs1,000 to 1,200 per hour.
IIT civil engineer and transport analyst Sudhir Badami said the machines are not a problem, but the drivers are. “Most of these machines are driven by untrained personnel. The pollution bit may be limited, but they generate a lot of muck at the entrance of construction sites.”
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