Bandra-Worli Sea Link a poor example of urban planning
Business Standard / Jun 30, 2009, 08:53 IST
The Mumbai commuter’s travel time between the Bandra flyover and Love Grove Junction at Worli is set to come down from 35 minutes to seven minutes from today, with the inauguration of the 5.6 km Sea Link, including India’s first cable-stayed bridge in the open sea. Yes, but only if wishes are horses. The sevenminute timeframe for the 7.7 km distance between the two points was promised by the Maharashtra government; like most government promises, this one will remain a pipedream. The reason is that the speed limit on the sea link has already been reduced from the original 80 kmph to 50 kmph. While even that would be a vast improvement on the peak-hour crawl on the existing land route, the problem begins at the point where the Sea Link meets the Worli Sea Face at (believe it or not) a 90-degree angle. The one-km stretch towards Love Grove Junction that then connects to the south and central business districts has a speed limit of 30 kmph, five traffic signals, and an equal number of diversions and curves. That last stretch alone could take 10-15 minutes, and cause traffic to back up onto the sea link. And, a motorist would have to pay Rs 50 (the one-way toll) to save perhaps 15 minutes of travel time.
There are no answers on why no city planner could work out channels for efficient traffic dispersal. There were plans to build a flyover in Worli to take on the traffic spilling from the bridge. There were also plans to build a 4.3 km flyover at Peddar Road in South Mumbai to carry the traffic from the sea link. None of these projects has seen the light of day as the state government has failed to obtain environment clearances. There has also been talk of a skywalk to solve the problems of pedestrians, but that too hangs fire.
It is amazing how the bridge, which adds such an impressive dimension to Mumbai’s skyline and held so much promise for easing the traffic woes of the city’s western suburbs, can be a victim of such poor planning. It is not that time was short for a proper traffic dispersal plan. The bridge has taken eight years to build, four more than scheduled, because of design changes, environment clearance delays and a slew of law suits. And this is just the first of the three-phase Western Freeway project. Work on the other two phases, linking Worli to Haji Ali and Haji Ali to Nariman Point, hasn’t started yet. While the second phase will take another four years to build, the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation is still awaiting cabinet approval for its revised proposal for the third phase. By way of comparison, China’s 36 km Hangzhou Bay Bridge, the world’s longest sea-crossing bridge, over seven times the length of the Mumbai bridge, took all of four years. Also, that country has built seven sea links in the past six years.
This does seem to be just another (fancy) road, built where it was possible to do so, though at tremendous cost. One question which crops up is: is it possible to decouple the environmental and legal clearances from the actual construction? The latter should be non-stop (subject to day-to- day environmental factors, such as tidal movements etc). Once the former are done then the design should be frozen for construction purposes. The pre-construction and construction phases should be put under the scanner at the earliest to pinpoint the sources of delays etc. The post-mortem should then be used urgently for the benefit of other projects in the pipeline.
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