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PERSONAL · 2026 · SYSTEM DESIGN · STATUS: IN DESIGN

MARG — Mumbai Ambulance Rapid Gateway

It started with an ambulance stuck in traffic.

Role
Designer (solo)
Timeline
Jan – Feb 2026
Team
Solo
Stack
Planned: Android apps, real-time backend, WebSockets, proximity engine

I once watched an ambulance sit in Mumbai traffic, siren screaming, going nowhere. Nobody was being careless. The cars had nowhere to go, and the officers at the junction had no idea it was coming until it was already stuck. Somewhere inside was someone whose minutes were running out. I couldn't stop thinking about it. MARG is my answer: give traffic police a warning before the ambulance reaches them, so the road is already clearing when it arrives.

Who it's for, and what it does

MARG is built for one group of people: the traffic police. The officers standing at a junction are the ones who can actually clear a road, and the problem I watched was that they find out about an ambulance when it is already stuck. So I designed MARG around them, not around the ambulance driver and not around the public.

When a verified ambulance starts a trip from A to B, every traffic officer within 100 metres of the route gets an advance alert, with the ambulance's live location and an ETA to their position. A control-room dashboard lets the police watch active trips.

What it deliberately does not do

  • It does not control traffic signals.
  • It does not enforce anything. It informs officers; what they do next is their call.
  • It has no public access. Only verified ambulances and authorised police can use it.
  • The control room only observes. There is no approve or reject step.

The idea in one line: assist the police, never automate them.

Four components, and how an alert flows

I designed four components. None of them is implemented yet.

  • Ambulance Android app. Where a verified ambulance starts a trip and shares its location.
  • Traffic Police Android app. Receives the alert and lets the officer answer with ACK, CLEARED or UNABLE.
  • Control Room web dashboard. Monitors active trips. Observation only.
  • Backend. Auth, trip management, a routing engine, a proximity engine, a notification engine and audit logging. The planned transport is HTTPS plus WebSockets for GPS and alerts.

From ambulance to officer

  1. 01A verified ambulance starts a trip. In the ambulance app, a trip from A to B begins.
  2. 02The backend plans the route. The routing engine works out the path the ambulance will take.
  3. 03The proximity engine finds the officers. Every traffic officer within 100 metres of that route is selected.
  4. 04The notification engine alerts them. Each officer gets an advance alert with the ambulance's live location and an ETA to their position, over WebSockets.
  5. 05The officer responds. From the police app they tap ACK, CLEARED or UNABLE. The control room sees the trip, and every step goes into the audit log.
AB
● ambulance   ● officer inside the 100 m corridor, alerted   ○ officer outside it, not alerted

Design principles and non-goals

Principles

  • Assist, don't automate. No signal control, no enforcement. The officer stays in charge.
  • No infrastructure dependency. No CCTV, RFID or signal integration, so another city could adopt it without rebuilding anything on the road.
  • Verified and authorised only. Ambulances are verified and police are authorised. There is no public access.
  • Accountability by design. Everything is written to an audit log.
  • Intentionally minimal scope. A small system is easier to make reliable, and reliability is the whole point here.

Non-goals

  • Controlling or overriding traffic signals.
  • Replacing or directing police decisions.
  • Any integration with CCTV, RFID or signal infrastructure.
  • Access for the general public.
  • Approve or reject powers in the control room.

Status and where it goes next

The design is done and the build hasn't started. There is no code yet, so this is a system design, not a shipped product.

What exists is the thinking, written down:

  • a vision document and a problem statement,
  • the system architecture, with ASCII diagrams,
  • a stakeholder brief addressed to Mumbai Traffic Police, with flow, sequence, proximity and non-goals diagrams.

The technology stack is still to be decided, apart from the planned HTTPS and WebSockets transport.

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