MUMBAI: After road, rail and air travel, Mumbaikars will now be able to book boat rides on their mobiles. Cab aggregator Uber is likely to launch UberBOAT from the Gateway of India on Wednesday morning.While Uber is tight-lipped about the launch, merely saying “Mumbaikars will get to experience a new mode of transport on the aggregator platform”, TOI has learned it will be a speedboat service.Sources indicated that UberBOAT will be speedboats with at least six seats and riders may be able to book a seat or an entire speedboat, just 15 minutes before boarding.According to a source, the first route being explored is Gateway-Mandwa Jetty and the fare could be a fixed rate initially before switching to the Uber dynamic pricing. Many Mumbaikars take regular ferries to Mandwa from where one can go to Alibaug or Kihim beaches by road. While the ferry journey takes one hour, UberBOAT will cover the distance in 20-22 minutes, the sources said.When contacted, a senior Uber official merely said the new mode of transportation will be a “game changer” for Mumbai.The speedboats are likely be 6-10 seaters, sources said. “If successful, the UberBOAT service could be launched for other destinations, including Navi Mumbai, in near future,” said an official from Mumbai Port Trust. There has been a demand from commuters to have a water transport service from Navi Mumbai areas such as Nerul or Belapur to south Mumbai. If UberBOAT is launched to connect the two cities, it would be of immense benefit to those travelling from far suburbs to south Mumbai daily for work,” the official added.On Wednesday, the new service will be launched by MbPT chairman Sanjay Bhatia , who had announced that “MbPT aims to create world-class infrastructure for water transport and sea tourism that will make Mumbai the country’s hub for sea transport and tourism.”With the increasing traffic jams on road and trains being overcrowded, Mumbaikars are looking forward to new modes of transport and one of them is certainly the waterways transport. “It would be great to travel from Belapur to south Mumbai in half an hour by boat than spend more than double the time to travel same distance by road or rail," said Nerul resident Pankaj Choudhary.