Why i hate the Mumbai coastal roads.

February 2024

Now that we have the divisive/catchy headline behind us, let me start with the premise. My end goal is to maximize net good in the city. I do not care if you are an ultraconservative Muslim, a far-right sanghi or a pure bred liberal. I want you to live a life that is healthy, fulfilling and enjoyable. In this write-up I will make my arguments on why the coastal road does not facilitate the building of this healthy, fulfilling and enjoyable future for our city & why it infact does the exact opposite. I will also try to suggest some solutions on what things Mumbai can instead spend its money on which will make the lives of Mumbaikars objectively better. 

Do you want people to forever travel in crowded locals? 😠

No, The different parts of what I define as the Coastal Road alignment have trip estimations of anywhere between 38k to 84k trips per day. Do you know how many people the Western line moves daily? 27 lakh. This used to be 35 lakh before COVID. The coastal road project isn't going to put a dent in the capacity shortfall that is required to reduce train overcrowding on the western railway. And remember this will serve areas just in the Western Line arc. 

The Bandra Worli sea link charges rs85 for a car ONE WAY, for the 5.6-kilometer long span. What will be the toll if one has to travel from say Kandivli to Worli? A 22km journey? Will it be less than 400rs? Can any of the commuters whose monthly rail pass costs less than half the cost of this ONE TIME ONE WAY ride on the coastal road afford this? Will even the AC local commuter who buys a 900 rupee Jojesheswari to Prabhadevi pass ever be able to afford taking a trip on the Versova to Worli coastal road?

If you think the coastal road is targeting the same commuters who take the Local trains & the opening of the coastal roads will in any way reduce overcrowding on the rail network, you are sorely mistaken.

It will solve traffic, right? Wrong. Urban freeways/flyovers don't solve traffic

 You open up Google Maps, with the traffic layer on, you can look around the kind of traffic other cities across the world have during their rush hours. You will realize that there is one constant, Traffic congestion is ubiquitous. Both in cities which have heavily invested in building urban freeways like Los Angeles, Houston, Moscow, Singapore, Delhi, Dubai AND in cities without much of an urban freeway system, with or without good public transport, like London, Paris, New York, HongKong, Tokyo, Seoul, and Mumbai. This points towards one basic fact, traffic congestion is inevitable and you cannot outrun it by building freeways. Urban freeways do not solve traffic. They just provide a little bit of additional capacity which gives us a temporary relief from traffic for a couple of years if not less...

But building an urban freeway/flyover does have undeniable negatives

Firstly, urban freeways induce demand. That is the reason why even after building 55 flyovers across Mumbai, traffic congestion has only increased. Mr Gadkari who was the MSRDC Chairman that started this 55 flyover project himself acknowledged so during an event in Pune.

Visual Pollution

Freeways are giant concrete pillars and viaducts that contribute to visual pollution. No person when thinking about Los Angeles thinks about the underside of the viaducts & spaghetti interchange where the homeless live. They think of Venice Beach, Santa Monica Pier or Hollywood Boulevard. People think of the Red square when they think of Moscow, not the 6 lane riverfront freeways. Freeways are something most cities try to bury underground or tuck them away in the form of sunken freeways. Even in Mumbai most of the underbellies of flyovers and freeways are dark dingy spaces where the homeless live, or the car parking spaces exist. Only a few spaces are somewhat appreciable and not a hotbed for illicit activities or eyesores to look at, like the Nanalal D Mehta Flyover near Ruia College. But even on those roads we would be better off having a nice tree lined boulevard with plenty of natural light instead of these flyovers. There is a reason we don't build a flyover on Marine Drive. We know that would look ugly. We value that space. Then why do we ruin other spaces with flyovers. Its very much a choice to build a flyover & we can choose to not build them.

Noise Pollution

You can stand over one of the existing foot-over bridges on either the EEH or the WEH and check the amount of traffic noise these roads generate. Mumbaikars are mad honkers who think honking will solve traffic problems which contributes to the unhealthily high noise levels. But that is only a part of the noise component, a lot of the noise comes from the mere friction the tires create against the road surface. And this noise is further amplified by the walls of the viaducts. We underestimate noise, but prolonged exposure to noise is a major contributor to high stress levels, that 30% of Mumbaikars already suffer from. 

Air Pollution

Vehicles generate air pollution, it's not a new revelation, what might be a new revelation for you is that the tailpipe exhausts will not be the biggest contributor in a few years. The tire dust from the same friction I mentioned above is also an increasing contributor of PM 2.5 matter around the freeways. In Western cities which have higher emission standards as compared to India, this tire dust already far eclipses tail pipe emissions in pollution.

Spatial costs of designing a city around mobility by cars

Have you ever felt anxious trying to cross one of Mumbai’s 5-6 lane roads even during a pedestrian green light? Have you found it difficult and tiring to cross these and find places of interest? Kapurbawdi Junction or the Kalanagar Junction does that to me. I hate crossing it. Everything around is designed too be traversed on a car, not even a bike. On a bike it still feels dangerous, but in a closed metal box 40kmph speeds on a wide road almost feels normal even in an otherwise highly dense city like Mumbai. Have you tried walking around BKC? It has wide footpaths but not many points of attraction or engagement. Walking there is boring and tiring. There are not many storefronts to look at, not many restaurants that aren’t inside a glass-front door. Its a space enjoyable to expore only if you own a vehicle. Compare that with the alleyways around the Bombay Stock Exchange in Ballard estate or around Nariman Point. You have scores of parsi bakeries, xerox shops, and thousands of small and medium-scale businesses. But But But… what about the large office spaces that modern corporates require surely they cant be accommodated in dense CBD’s like the ones in South Mumbai? 

Allow me to introduce to you the City of London. No, not London, the City of London. This is the place within London where the Romans first set up the city called Londinium back in the year 43 AD. The oldest part of London. This area is twice as large as BKC’s triangle between NSE. And it houses some of the most iconic office towers. But is a very old and dense neighborhood that can easily walked across and explored thanks to the 7 metro lines that service this area. How do you reach BKC, Currently, you have to take errant rickshaws, or buses both of which are choked by traffic. Line 2B & Line 3 are both at least a year away. Interchange to the Line 2B via Kurla is also going to be a laborious walk in the opposite direction for half a kilometer just to reach the Metro. MMRDA evicted scores of people to build the SCLR but finds land acquisition difficult now when it comes to building an underground metro to reduce the Kurla Interchange distance?

Can our city take any more cars?

Today already with just 10 lakh private cars in the BMC limits, every empty road space has a big suv parked on it, every corner of the street is littered with cars. There is no parking space! And during rush hours there is slow-moving bumper-to-bumper traffic everywhere. The speed of our efficient BEST buses in which the common people travel, had come down to 9kmph in 2018! 5 years ago! Half of what it was 10 years prior to that. What will more infrastructure oriented towards cars cause? It will dump more cars on Mumbai’s roads. Walking will be difficult, getting on and off a footpath will require you to squeeze past parallel parked cars like one has to already do on the streets around Ballard estate. I have no beef with you if you personally own a car and like to travel by a car. My point is that if everyone in the city chooses to own a car, none of us will be moving anywhere irrespective of the time of day. So it is in your & my best interest to agree to build a city where we have extremely high-quality public transport with cushioned seats and low overcrowding where every person who commutes via a car for its comfort will immediately switch to and we will have one less car on the road. 

What can the ₹90,000 crore buy us instead?

Remember the 90k crore figure doesn’t include the cost of Virar to Palghar 36km section which will further push the cost higher.

1. The cost of the tender to convert all trains in Mumbai to air-conditioned one’s is ₹20,000 crore. It's languishing.

2. The cost of adding CBTC signaling technology to all three of Mumbai’s major suburban rail lines is ₹5,928 crores.

 At an average cost of ₹2.2 crores rupees, The entire Mumbai Metropolitain region could have 41,000 of the new iconic 66 seater double-decker EV Buses. A figure that is 3 times larger than we will ever need. Studies show we just need around 10-12k buses (not even double-decker) to completely overhaul the way the city travels. London’s buses have a ridership of 56 lakhs with just 8.6k buses. And London has a population less than half as big as MMR! With our 3k buses BEST records ridership numbers of 35 lakh! We could do so much better if we had more buses! Maybe some of the money could be used to set up a bus factory & maintenance facility near Mumbai where all these buses can be rapidly manufactured and deployed for use across MMR?

We could build an 80km long underground metro line or a 251 kilometer elevated metro line. But aren't we already building those? Yes, but not fast enough! Pour more money in! Expedite the process! Use the resources to build more simultaneous lines, will require way less concrete! Line 2B & Line 4 which will have a major impact on reducing the overcrowding on Central & Western line are nowhere near completion! MMRDA isnt even taking up newer lines like Line 13 & 14 which will be key at reducing train overcrowding in the Vasai-Virar & Dombivli-Badlapur region. When i talked to a very senior ex-official about it, they cited that it is because MMRDA doesn't have enough money to execute these lines. But then does it make any sense to build these 90k crore coastal roads instead of focusing on the Metro lines that will reduce the overcrowding? We could turn each and every existing road to ones having high surface quality with no potholes like some of the ones you see in Europe or East Asia even at junctions.

Do I hate all road projects? No.

Obviously not. There are some which I like while some which I don't. And it depends on a lot of factors including the places the road is connecting, the number of lanes the road has. Whether the road has bus lanes, bicycle lanes, or footpaths. Is it going to fill a geographic gap or is its sole purpose to add vehicle carrying capacity to the same localities which already have a lot. I would like to list out a few ones that I like with a brief description on why.

Virar-JNPT Spur

Its a 3+3 lane peripheral road to aid traffic flow along the periphery of the metropolitain region. This will allow cargo coming from the northern states to bypass the the Mumbai Metropolitan region & reduce the number of cargo trucks that currently pass through the urban area of the Metropolitain region just to move towards southern India. It helps improve logistics in the country, opens up previously unconnected spaces for investment and brings jobs to under connected localities.

Virar Alibaug Multi Modal Corridor

Another north south trunk road project across the MMR which promises to connect several regions of MMR like Virar-Bhiwandi-Kalyan Dombivli- Panvel- JNPT through a 6 lane road project. With supposed addition of public transport modes (hence multi modal) in the future which will connect lots of places which arent connected to each other. The connection of these places together will boost network effects for the economy of MMR by allowing better access to the job market for businesses and easier intra-regional mobility.

Thane Coastal Road Project

Currently the northern part of Thane has only one trunk road, the Ghodbunder road. This coastal road will hug the coastline of Vasai creek and enable another alternative route to travel towards Thane station. I especially like this road because it is again allowing growth along areas that are currently salt pans & farmlands. The growth along these spaces has slowed down because the GB road is saturated. On top of that accessing the road itself from some of these far localities is laborious. Just the addition of this parallel road along the coastline will allow housing to prop up there, it will leverage upon the existing social infrastructure GB road has built over the last decade and add a lot of housing supply to the neighborhood. It is the most efficient way for an urban area to grow.

Dahisar - Bhayander Link road

This will provide an alternative to the Western Express Highway by directly connecting Dahisar to Bhayander and freeing up a lot of long detours that people make via the already congested WEH. By now you must be seeing a pattern. I prefer roads that connect two places which are right next to each other but have no direct connection to each other. Targeting such places and building roads at such new spaces adds a lot more value than expanding the number of lanes on the same segment of road by destructive widening or even building flyovers.

I will name a few similar ones on the top of my head which I am in favor of as long as the government is willing to reserve bus lanes on them, because without bus lanes the long-term efficiency of any new road project comes down heavily. The list of some of the roads I like are as follows: Thane-Borivali tunnel, Bhayander-Vasai Link road. Bandra Worli Sea Link (with future reservation of bus lanes), Mumbai Trans Harbor Link, Airoli-Ghansoli Link road, Ghansoli-Vikhroli Bridge, Marine Drive to Haji Ali tunnel section of coastal road, Dombivli-Mankoli Link road, Karanja-Revas Bridge, Kolshet Kalher bridge, Turbhe-Kharghar tunnel.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. And I am well aware some of these projects are in their advanced stages of implementation and there are no promises of a bus lane being reserved on the same, which is a shame. 

In addition to these Mumbai centric projects, I am also very much in favor of access controlled intercity expressways like the Samruddhi Mahamarg or the Delhi Mumbai Expressway or the Pune Mumbai expressway. I would make some small tweaks with their features like adding the number of animal crossings present and speed enforcement, but I more or less think these are great projects for spreading economic prosperity across other regions of Maharashtra from the rich Metro cities. I think the govt should double down on building these instead of spending ungodly amounts of money building urban freeways in Mumbai that provide vastly lesser social and economic benefits but just dump more and more cars and scooters on Mumbai’s roads while there is already inadequate parking space for them.