Mumbai: The 21st century city running on 19th century infrastructure

He points out that there have been few repairs to even marquee thoroughfares such as Marine Drive; and those that have taken place have been of poor quality. He believes that, like other government tenders, Mumbai’s roads too are caught in the familiar L1 trap, where the lowest bidder gets the project. This inevitably means small firms with little manpower and technical expertise bag key projects, which are poorly executed.

City-wide Log Jam Next?

The six-km Bandra Worli Sea Link is perhaps symbolic of what ails Mumbai. Originally envisioned in the ’80s as a means of connecting the then emerging north to the south of Mumbai, this bit of the sea link took around a decade — with costs quadrupling — to come to its current state. And, it’s far from perfect. Even as it makes for a pretty picture, sweeping across the sea, entry and exit are chaotic.

On the Worli end in central Mumbai, for instance, the road terminates from a broad expanse to a narrow exit, which makes a sharp left as it makes landfall. Other projects such as Eastern Freeway (to connect Fort in south Mumbai to Ghatkopar in the north), The Trans Harbour Link (Sewri in central Mumbai to Nhava Sheva in Navi Mumbai), a contentious-for-atleast-a-decade Peddar Road flyover, and a link road to connect the western suburb of Santa Cruz with the eastern one of Chembur have all been delayed by years, if not decades.

Caught in their cars and bikes with rapidly shrinking space for and between each vehicle, the city’s residents may soon be staring down a city-wide log jam.
This looming gridlock is especially galling for Ajit Gulabchand, chairman & CEO of HCC, the company that built the Bandra-Worli sea link. “Mumbai is caught in a maze of local bodies with little empowerment, each taking up its own initiatives to expand existing new roads and add new ones,” he says.

His office itself is a short drive away from one flyover that took 17 years to build, while another proposed road connecting the north and south of Mumbai across the sea has been in various stages of consideration practically since Independence. “Mumbai doesn’t have a city CEO who has executive powers and a master plan to fix the city,” adds Gulabchand. “Without this there can be no progress.”

Problem of Plenty

With some 17 agencies tasked with Mumbai’s upkeep, it is little surprise the city is on a highway to nowhere. While proposed roads have remained a pipe dream, existing ones are falling to pieces and firms such as HCC are showing little interest in taking up its repair. “There is little focus on quality and the small contract sizes rule large players like us out,” says Gulabchand.

Instead, Mumbai’s local bodies have embarked on a sporadic and ill-advised routine of road repairs — switching between repair materials and surfaces at random. “Concrete is a terrible foundation for main roads because it has to be ripped out completely if it deteriorates,” says Gulabchand. “We have shown that high-quality tarmac can be durable.”

A Temporary Band-aid

Prachi Pawar has found a novel way around getting snagged in this traffic vortex — she doesn’t bother attempting to negotiate it at all. Instead, from Sunday evening to Friday night, the advertising executive lives as a paying guest in a small room in south Mumbai, 10 minutes from her office by cab. On Friday night, after the bedlam of rush hour has died down, she takes a cab or (when she’s feeling up to it) a train to her parents’ house in Thane.

“I would spend four hours on the road gnashing my teeth through peak hour traffic,” says Pawar. “This may be worse for my wallet, but it’s infinitely better for my peace of mind.” While she admits to missing home comforts periodically, it’s a small price to pay for avoiding her hellish commute. “In Mumbai it’s not just clogged roads, but their horrible condition, bad driving and pollution that make my town house essential,” she adds.

Unlike other Indian cities, the roads in Mumbai, especially in the south, have little space to expand. Hemmed in by legal and illegal buildings on both sides, city planners have few choices for growth. Instead, bodies such as the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation have built a series of 55 flyovers all over the city as at least a temporary band-aid for some of these ills.

Politics & Red Tape Too

A new flyover, connecting Pedder Road to Marine Drive, however, is caught in a web of politics and red tape, with local residents demanding it be scrapped, while city planners believe it will offer an important safety valve to Mumbai’s traffic woes. “As soon as they start building this flyover, traffic will be unmanageable for at least five years,” says Bombay First’s Nayar. “Given the tardy execution of other projects in the city, there’s little reason to assume this will be completed on time.”

However, all is not lost for Mumbai, insist officials from the city’s administrative units. For example, a 6-km road between Santa Cruz and the Eastern Express highway is a couple of months away from completion — even if it took six years to get this far.

Work is also on full swing on the Eastern Freeway by the MMRDA (the development body for the Mumbai metropolitan region), which together with two smaller roads will aim to provide seamless connectivity from south Mumbai to Ghatkopar, 20-25 km to the east. This should be ready in a month or two also, say MMRDA officials. For Mumbai’s long-suffering commuters, a very dim light may be visible at the end of a very long, dark — and badly paved — tunnel.