Plainspeak: Paltry public transport and Mumbaiya traffic

Cars, never mind their prices or the fuel’s, are bought in India for several reasons. One, you have the money, so get one, or even many. Two, you don’t have the finance, so buy under mortgage because you need it. The need is because the public transport system is in the pits. Also, because a car is a status symbol, but that is the least of the three, but significant.

The car traffic has slowed down the bus speeds, and the minimum run of 200 km per bus per day has become impossible.

As the car populations grows, the roads become scarce, because many cities have just no space, and newer ones are in newer developments, and given the poor state of public transport, an incentive for buying of cars. It is a vicious cycle which can be broken by only one move – step up investments in public transport, which however, is not easily forthcoming. If they are seen, it is nominal compared to the demand.

And being big-ticket projects, they take time for planning, and much slower execution is their hallmark, which, as a consequence, push the demand for cars, and for those who cannot, motor bikes, which in a city like Mumbai, are not safe. Nobody leaves them a path, and have to struggle through mazes of cars. Yet, they proliferate. You cannot blame the buyers and users because the flaw is in the planning.

Mumbai is a city which is among ‘most cars’ list in the country. In fact, if there is a disincentive to buy a car, and use it, it is absence of parking spaces. Even if tiring it is, owners prefer to drive long distances because the drivers cost, and being a large city, the drivers cannot take them back to the owners’ families for use. They sit idle, playing cards on the bonnets with their peers. A driver is only to help park a car!

In my 29 years in the city, I have only seen the situation worsening to the extent that sidewalks have been appropriated for parking, and municipal corporation’s plan to charge for night parking outside the buildings met with serious resistance. There cannot be a retrofitting of buildings to allow for parking spaces, and a new building code requires each apartment to have a designated parking slot inside the building.

That, however, is for new constructions. Others, including fancy brands like Mercedes and BMWs have to nestle amid the lesser on the kerbside. Walk – not drive – through any part of the city to see it; you cannot drive because you are in a bumper-to-bumper traffic. The new building code’s requirement for one-flat-one-parking has helped builders to seek and secure payments for it in cash, which is not the civic body’s concern.

In my 29 years in the city, I have only seen the situation worsening

On the other hand, the city has thrown up a strange situation. The public transporter, which is the municipalised Brihan Mumbai Electric Supply & Transport (BEST), and has a bus service to almost any part of the city in a well-knit route plan, is unable to run them optimally. The car traffic has slowed down the bus speeds, and the minimum run of 200 km per bus per day has become impossible.

Consequently, not all services per route can be operated, and the schedules go haywire, and for a Mumbaiwallah, more than anything, time is of the essence. A bus not found or missed means a local train not caught, leading to missed appointments and lost time. A person in Mumbai is never known to stroll; he walks purposefully, because this business of time is a key element of his personality.

The story of local trains is another pathetic part of living in Mumbai, but given the long distances they need to cover every day, the commuters do not buy or use cars. They would perhaps spend half the day to work and the other half to drive back with hardly any time for work. That, and their economic status pre-empts the very idea of a car ownership. But yes, when they compete with cars to walk from station to work or home, they curse them.

The public bus operator has run into losses, because the cars which overcrowd the roads, which are narrowed because of parked cars on the sides, slow down the buses. Because, the BEST did not keep ahead of the curve in the demand and supply equation. Not being able to meet the demand as it grew brought cars to the roads, and in the bargain, stubbed its own toe badly. Recently it announced fare cuts to keep passengers. A private operator would have closed down.

Mahesh Vijapurkar