Bridge Sessions

When Maharashtra Chief Minister Sushilkumar Shinde travelled with what is commonly called a "high-level delegation" to Delhi to ask the central government to sanction Rs 18,000 crore for infrastructure projects, mainly in Bombay, the complaints about "stepmotherly treatment" and the shoddy PowerPoint presentations were deja vu for the officials there. But what they had never seen before were the plans to build flyovers spanning nearly 50 km over the sea, a skybus project, and several overpasses to decongest the city's famously inadequate road network. In fact, no other city in India has even thought of what Bombay is planning to get.

But then, Bombay is unique. Its infamous strip-like shape means more than 5.5 million train commuters and 4.5 million bus passengers make interminable trips to offices in south Bombay every morning and back to north Bombay and beyond every evening for that's as close as they can afford to live. And while Mumbaikars silently suffer the tenuous order in the chaos, clearly the city's attraction as an investment destination suffers when the 27-km ride from the airport to south Bombay takes more than two hours, when Bombay's well-known traffic jams hit.

Needless to say, it's good politics to try bringing sanity to the daily grind of commuting. And given that most of the commute happens on the same narrow north-south road, one way to create more road space is to build flyovers. The bjp-Shiv Sena government got 43 made, which have for the most part dramatically collapsed travelling time. The Congress-NCP government too has announced 36 overpasses, four east-west link roads and 50 km of flyovers over the sea. In all, more than Rs 10,000 crore will be invested in the road network. But with the state's deficit bloated, the road ahead, say some planners, seems full of the potholes Mumbaikars are used to. And a recent McKinsey report confirmed suspicions that even all this may not be enough. It recommends a further infusion of Rs 15,000 crore to make a mass rapid train system connecting busy suburbs and several new freeways.

Some experts also have doubts about the two oversea flyovers. For one, the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation's (MSRDC) Bandra-Worli sea link, which will connect a 5-km stretch of sea that is a half-an-hour drive on the land route, will release fast-moving traffic into Worli or Bandra causing jams. When the sea link gets completed up to Nariman Point, south Bombay's narrow streets and lack of parking could make for more gridlock. And both projects are behind schedule. The Bandra-Worli stretch should have been over by now but is only about 10 per cent done. "We'll combine work on the Bandra-Worli link with work on the next phase from Worli to Nariman Point," says R.K. Jha, executive director, MSRDC.

The corporation also plans a sea link to connect Sewri in central Bombay with the mainland in Nhava Sheva. This Rs 4,300-crore project "will be the most significant as it'll literally create more land in the city by linking Bombay to the mainland", says U.P.S. Madan, CEO, Maharashtra Housing and Development Authority. But it won't be easy to raise or recover money for such projects, given MSRDC and the state government's financial situation, according to Pankaj Joshi, urban planner and consultant to the city's apex planning body, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA). The McKinsey report recommends setting up a dedicated fund for Bombay's infrastructure.

In April, the government announced a Rs 2,600-crore project to improve the city's roads and build 36 flyovers over the next two years. Although the chief minister had said the state government would fund the project entirely, it is now likely to give only Rs 500 crore and pass on most of the burden to MMRDA."This is one of those political things," says Joshi. "Flyovers provide visible symbols of achievement, and this government doesn't want to be left behind by the previous one, which made the first phase of flyovers."

But anyone who's spent hours stuck in a jam, when they should have been at a meeting, knows there is more than just political capital at work. For Vijailakshmi Mazumdar, a manager at Bombay Dyeing, her 40-km Thane-Parel daily commute today takes 40 minutes less; she uses eight of the new flyovers on her way. "Now I sometimes go from work to see art shows, or to restaurants in town or to meet friends in south Bombay because the JJ flyover has made it so much easier," she says.

But critics say bringing traffic fast into the island city has clogged up the narrow streets in south Bombay and at either end of the flyovers in north Bombay. In traffic-nightmares Bhendi Bazaar and Zaveri Bazaar, residents were excited when the pillars for the winding JJ flyover were brought in. "Now while traffic moves faster on the flyover, there are jams at either end, so the situation has not really improved," says Arva Harnesswala, who lives in one of those old buildings the flyover just about skirts. Ashok Datar, who works for Network for Transportation Alternatives, an ngo, is harsher: "The only thing that has changed is the points where the jams happen."

And the investment in the road networks helps only a small number of people who use cars. Around 10 million people use the city's public transport system, while there are only one lakh cars registered in Bombay and about 20 per cent more, registered elsewhere, ply here. Vandana Khare, who takes a train and bus to travel 60 km to get to work in Sion from home in Vasai still takes 1 hour, 45 minutes to reach. "What most people want is more buses, more trains," she says.

Some of that investment in public transport will come through the Rs 4,500-crore partly-World Bank-funded Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP), work on which is slated to be completed in 2008. Nearly Rs 3,650 crore will go into rehauling Bombay's local train network that now carries about five times the load it should. About Rs 850 crore will go into buying 700 new buses, making east-west road corridors in the city, and installing a computerised traffic regulation system. "Some delay in MUTP will be made up by the fact that offices have moved to the Bandra-Kurla complex, Parel, Saki Naka and other areas, reducing pressure on the daily north-south commute," says Madan.

"Nowadays demand for office space comes from call centres and IT-enabled services, which are open 24 hours. Employees have to be ferried from work to home and companies want to be close to their employees' homes so that they don't spend too much time and money on this. Hence they're all taking offices in suburbs like Powai, Thane and Andheri," says Rajesh Khushalani, manager in Knight Frank, a realty firm. Nearly a third of the office space in Nariman Point, where commercial rents were once among the most expensive in the world, is now vacant.

Precisely one of Bombay's 22 new malls, scheduled to open by next year, will be in south Bombay and only two of the 15 new multiplexes. Planners say the government should help this natural decongestion of the city rather than ease the commute into it. "In the long term, the only solution is to reduce the need for people to come in to south Bombay," said Arun Mokashi, a transportation expert with Tata Consultancy Services. McKinsey report author Shirish Sankhe says more business districts elsewhere in the city will boost economic activity. Meanwhile, if the ambitious roadwork plans do materialise, they will provide a much-needed zip to Mumbaikars who spend more time in trains and on road than people in any other city and sometimes even more time getting to work than they do at work.