Nearly three years ago, the horse-driven carriages had disappeared off the Mumbai roads and the clip-clopping of the horses had stopped. The buggies driven by horses were banned in 2016 on the grounds of animal cruelty. However, what was once a tourist attraction is all set to make a comeback, minus the horses as Ubo Ridez, a transportation company, is planning to introduce nearly 40 electronic, battery-driven carriages that will take tourists around heritage spots in Colaba, Nariman Point, Marine Drive, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus and Girgaum Chowpatty.
Ketan Kadam, the founder, and CEO of Ubo Ridez said that the Victorias are similar to the former ones, minus the horses.
Meanwhile, the carriages will run at the speed of 20 km an hour and will be equipped with GPS-driven audio tours. So that whenever a tourist passes by the Gateway of India or The Taj Mahal Palace, they can hear all about their history. Tourists will also be provided with an option to pick their language for the audio tour.
The carriages also have speakers connected to Bluetooth that let you enjoy some music of your choice. More importantly, the carriage is environment-friendly as the lead-acid batteries that are usually used in cars will be substituted with lithium-ion batteries.
This is what we are bringing to the heritage precincts of Mumbai, while the @mybmc restores heritage zones. The Victoria tangas are gone but we’re bringing electric vehicles, no animal cruelty and environment friendly. Happy to be a small part of pushing for this pic.twitter.com/ah3W7aNCWh— Aaditya Thackeray (@AUThackeray) August 21, 2019
Meanwhile, after the ban in 2016, several people were left jobless and accordingly, UBO Ridez will now hire the same people who lost their jobs and could not be rehabilitated to ride the carriages.
Despite being a modern programme, one will have to manually book a carriage. The cost of a short ride, which is the distance from the Gateway of India to Radio Club is ₹300 for a carriage of six people. A longer ride, which covers the distance from Nariman Point to Pizza by the Bay, Marine Drive, and back, is ₹500.
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