HYDERABAD: The ‘World Car -Free Day’ observed by the city’s IT clan on Tuesday was a runaway success. Just like on any other Tuesday most of the software employees chose to give their motor vehicles some rest and opted for car pooling, public transport and bicycles.
The World Car-Free Day was organised in the city by the Hyderabad Software Enterprises Association (HYSEA) to have one day free of cars to raise awareness about the amount of pollution emitted by motorised vehicles and its environmental impact.
P Vasu, an employee of Virtusa who took part in car pooling for the first time, said, “Daily I go to the office with one of my friends but today, in order to support the initiative, we gathered five people and went to the office. Apart from reducing the pollution, it gave us an opportunity to interact with strangers and we talked about many things ranging from cycling to mountaineering.”
On Monday, IT employees were asked by the corporates and IT parks promoting this initiative to leave their cars at home and opt for alternative transport.
Haritha Byluppala, an engineer at Schbeider Electric, said, “I am an avid bicyclist but I never thought that I would go to office on bicycle someday. This initiative made it possible and now I am more energetic and much more productive at work. It also saves a lot of time and there is no need to plan my work out separately as I am cycling over 20 km.”
The only difference between the Car Free Thursday and today was that there were no additional public transport buses plying.
“We could not inform the RTC before hand and get additional buses plying. There is a lot of paperwork involved and we decided to observe this day without help from RTC,” explained Ramesh Loganathan, president of HYSEA and MD of Progress Software.