As being the financial capital of India, Mumbai has its own charm of commuting. The potholes-rigged roads, delayed and overcrowded local trains, crowding metros, refusing to ply auto-rickshaws and cabbies, and lots more. However, the blame game cannot be drawn to the in-sufficient funds raised by government to these facilities. Doing a minute study of the city that India admires the most – a long plethora came along the minute fallacies that the government could have avoided at the first place to have gotten the transportation in order as per the requirements.
Though, instead of piling up a long list of must-haves in the future as the modes of transport, the authority needs to have got the first one right is “integration of development and maintenance authorities of these transport modes”.
Confirming the numbers by a survey, which to a lot of extent is realistic on a daily basis, approximately 75 lakh audience commutes in local trains; 40 lakh prefers the BEST’s buses, while the other 50 lakh deserve of going in privacy over the public by sticking to taxis and auto-rickshaws. The better side of it, recently inaugurated Metro train service received heavy response from the commuter while the Monorail fails to do so desperately being quite cheaper on fares and better on services. Well, as per many of the dilemmas these much of the modes are actually lesser than the sufficient level of transportation the city needs for connecting one end to another; but the major cause related to their failures along with the high success rate of revenues is, lack of integration between its development and maintaining body.
Coming to the world’s oldest and the mode deepest mode of transport, the roads, Mumbai is still struggling to have the ample of it the at least to compete on the global standard (from the point of namesake even). But yet the government authorities aren’t concerned about giving it a shot to the highest tax-paying citizens of the country. As per a data sourced, approximately 450 cars are registered in the city everyday with no places to run even a one more in this congestive scenario. Worsening the conditions, construction of the city’s first metro route i.e. VAG Metro line, it toiled the traffic police to deploy more 200 personnel in the vicinity of the project for the smooth flow of traffics. Adding woes further, the auto-rickshaws parked outside the Metro stations are causing the nuisance as well. Rickshaws are seen adding their ratio to the chaos, and also taking away the business from the BEST which is it had just started for the commuter of Metro to reach assigned destination. Thoughtfully, as per one of the auto-drivers outside the Andheri station, their business had shattered due to the Metro trains and for compensating over that they are now forced to look for the business outside those new Metro stations. On the other side of this story, BEST had deployed new routes outside the busiest 11 Metro bays but as per an official those services received not so happening response – except a one of it; all because of those hoaxed auto-rickshaws taking away the BEST’s commuters. Since, the BEST says if this happens to continues for the trial of next four month of their feeder-service they have to shun those new services instead of making loss out of it.
On the flipside, MMRDA, the body that is entitled to plan the city, is no longer seemed focused on its job. The official may have lost the concentration by appointing various other committees which don’t exactly do the job. And all of these conglomerates spend time in spilling the blame over each other for the fallouts. To be a bit precise saying that MMRDA collects toll for the highways and roads which it has build, but still one can find a number of potholes over them, which at places are so severe measuring 3×3 metres with 10 inches depth. It’s not so obvious to explain as we already knew how many drivers broke their back and motorcyclists lost their lives over these potholes. The only benefiters from such undulations are the garage owners and service centers of the auto companies which run into several packets from customers over the damages caused by those.
The other side of the discussion where the railway and other authorities fits too claimed their inefficiency in landing the commuters to the other side of the connectivity. One such example of it goes well with the non-existence of ticket counter at the skywalk of Andheri Metro, where most of the audiences are caught by ticket checker for trespassing into the Railway’s premises without a ticket. For that, one has to get down the skywalk – purchase the ticket – and then again climb the bridge to get the momentum going. Point here, what’s the use of building the skywalk when one has to get down for the tickets. To its solution, a ticket counter over the floor there will be making business if it would come up soon, but due to the word-war between Metro and WR officials this initiative hasn’t taken a leap into the consideration over its maintenance reason.
Even the monorail that is giving a miss to the chunk of commuter despite being fairly advanced and competitively cheaper, sits on the same sitcom of inefficient-connectivity to the other routes. Out of the all station on its route, only Chembur is well connected with a skywalk while the rest of them are just laid like careless bout. One of such stations is such severe, that its end-point is exited amidst a truck terminal. So with such ideologies behind this service, who is expected to use them? The other of its drawback remains the route being quite far from the commercial and residential hubs. On contrary, once if its other phase have started, then the good cause of travelling on it can be seen feasible, as the posh south Bombay will then be connected to it for a wiser cause.
And lastly on the tracks, Railways had made an extension on the harbor routes till Goregaon which will see the inauguration soon, where the WR and CR too will see a couple of stations coming into their way.
Conclusion here can be explained in simpler words with the integration of the authorities that are developing these transportation modes and the ones that are assigned its maintenance. It isn’t ousted that the planning authority of Mumbai i.e. MMRDA has to look various key-projects at a same time, which is understood at times, but what about the roads and highways: do they needed various committees and specialization for the roads that are build in different parts of the city? However, number of people die on it every and every and some suffer such intense injuries that at times havocs them to have been better died. The government does very little to solve it by paying small packets for refurbishing them rather than taking a strict toil on the road contractors. The ultimate root to it can be cured by a committee encompassing all the modes of transportation applied on the roads. Rather than just issuing permits and licenses RTO shall also look into the functioning of the taxis and auto-rickshaws and must see out where the customers are reused for the ride. A proper coordination with the BEST too shall be maintained so that both fishes can have their share of business righteously and make the reach deeper and thicker which may not have been possible before. In addition to them, the time-tables of all the transport services shall be integrated with each other so an overhaul may be avoided. Planning the transportation will only lead to a better Mumbai and the better city. Otherwise development will be rake empty-handed without proper transportation solutions.
Saved for the last, the guardian and the honchos of transportation shall also look into developing the seaways phished in and around the city and connecting and it well to roads and others. Mumbai has a large coastline which will aid in reducing the rush on roads and railways to a larger extent. And more to it, the city will also derive a new direction of expanding in the nearby coastal locations if the sea-faring will fare well.
