Imapact of Mass Transportation in Mumbai, India

The traffic problem in Mumbai will keep increasing unless the surface ministry gets better vision to deal with it. Hoping they would formulate some preventive policies and related actions. I, as a common person has developed an aversion with short sighted policy makers. Let us see the issue in different view point: -

There is huge gap between the number new vehicles getting on the road everyday and the existing infrastructure. This gap is much more than the state governments’ predation in terms of infrastructure to accommodate these on the road. In addition, they add to congestion, vehicular pollution and of course respiratory related diseases which Times Of India is already mentioning these days. Lastly it also consumes huge resources in terms of petrol and diesel.

The only way to curb this problem is to improve the mass transportation system and make it more attractive option to the middle class and upper middle class people who use small and mid-size car to travel to the work. This will take long way in saving resources and curbing environmental issues in metros like Mumbai.

Following are the measures one can take to improve the mass transportation:

1. Add air-conditioned coach (in line with first-class coach) to every train. It will definitely a big attraction who wants to travel by train, but avoid Mumbai heat and humid.
2. Improve the Railway Station and surrounding. It is biggest put-off for the people who actually would like to travel by Train.
3. Add escalators and elevators in Railway station in Mumbai making an attractive option to choose the Mass Transit.
4. More number of air-conditioned BEST Buses on popular routes, especially during peak hours.
5. Make seasoned pass/daily ticket online to avoid standing in the queue.
6. All major global cities provide excellent mass transportation where C-level executives travel without any remorse.

Logically and technically, flyovers are useless and it is very surprising to see how state government is putting massive resources behind this concept. Flyovers do not add extra lanes to the existing over crowded highways / major streets nor does it actually solve the purpose. In addition, there will be congestion at the end of the flyover when two or three routes meet on main highway.

The only option will be either create separate underground highway for long distances or have separate sky-highway (similar to the Bangalore sky-highway). This will add extra lanes to the existing high-ways and also expedite the travel time to the traveler who does not want to get into the local traffic.

In addition, the govt may think of waterways (which are really effective on other global metros) as an option to travel long distance. Of course, this will ONLY be successful if they are well connected with local bus routes.

In summary, the improvement in mass transportation will ONLY be an option if the civic administrative want to tackle the issue in long run. This will also help to curb most of the vehicular pollution related issues.