Hardly a day passes without mention of a new infrastructure project in Maharashtra. With a proactive Prime Minister in Delhi and a Chief Minister in Mumbai, aided and abetted by environment minister Prakash Javadekar and transport minister Nitin Gadkari, the stage is set for a slew of projects in a state where 45 per cent live in cities and towns. Fadnavis is setting up a “war room” to expedite these. 

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The most problematic is the much-delayed coastal road in greater Mumbai. This was the brainchild of former CM Prithviraj Chavan, who wanted this as his legacy. There was confusion, which persists to this day, of whether this highway on the west coast would be a sea link or coastal road.

The sea link, an extension of the Rs1,600 crore Bandra-Worli Link (BWSL), was estimated to cost Rs400 a km, as against Rs80 crore per km for the coastal road. So the odds were always against it. Now the cost of the 35.6 km road, from Nariman Point at the southern tip to Kandivali in the north, has shot up to Rs10,000 crores.

The municipal corporation is going to build the road and has appointed a committee to recommend how to proceed. Due to differences within it, there were two options. The first envisages 4+4 lanes, while the second only half as many. The first reclaims 9.8km from the sea and another 8km over mangroves, exactly half the total length.

Now the proposal has been amended slightly with STUP consultants to include two underwater tunnels from Nepean Sea Road to NCPA and Juhu to Madh via Versova. Each will be 3.5km long and is a far better, if much more expensive, alternative to roads on stilts, also envisaged. More tunnels are also on the anvil.

The plan is a throwback to the dreaded “R” word – reclamation, which was abandoned in the 1970s when planners criticised the mindless development of Nariman Point and Backbay from the sea. This reclamation perpetuated the north-south traffic axis of the city, instead of propelling it eastwards to Navi Mumbai, as planners intended. It also led to the erosion of suburban beach fronts like in Versova.

The 110-hectare reclamation also contravenes the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ), which was enacted precisely to protect the fragile coast from being exploited by builders. Javadekar has already indicated that he will give the project his nod. The CRZ is particularly stringent about destroying mangroves. Roads on stilts, such as that planned over the mangroves off Carter Road in Bandra, will surely harm the vegetation underneath.

Mumbai’s most prized natural vista — its coastline — is in imminent danger of being obliterated by a coastal highway. The proponents point out that there will be additional promenades along the coastal road and green areas in the reclaimed sections. Thankfully, no real estate schemes will be permitted in the newly-carved areas. This has led to some proponents dubbing it an environmentally sensitive project, which is far from being the case. 

Any transport project which caters almost exclusively to car owners, constituting only 7 per cent of commuters, as does the iconic BWSL, will only add to the congestion in south Mumbai and along the 22 entry/exit points along the route. This, at a time when Nariman Point is losing its clout as a central business district and making way for the Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC), Andheri, Powai and the like in the suburbs.  Rents in BKC now surpass those of Nariman Point.

At a time when the developed world is preventing cars from entering city centres, Mumbai is doing exactly the opposite. The metropolis was once famed for carrying the largest number of passengers in the world by public transport – its much-vaunted local railways and the BEST bus service. From around 87 per cent of commuters using motorised transport, the number may – according to unofficial estimates – have come down to a shocking 66 per cent. The decline is mainly of bus passengers, since they are caught in interminable snarls, while car, taxi and auto use has increased. There are 24.75 lakh vehicles registered in the city – four times the number in 1991 -- and 1.5 lakh enter it daily.

Mumbai’s officials — planners seem an extinct species, long before the Niti Aayog — are oblivious of the need to curb automobile emissions to reduce global warming. When Gadkari was Maharashtra’s PWD minister in the late 1990s, he advocated flyovers and coastal freeways because, without signals, the pollution per car would reduce. This is true, but any back-of-the-envelope calculation would reveal that if the total number of cars increased exponentially, so would their exhausts.

The financial implications are also worrying. The political climate in Maharashtra is inimical to tolls on highways, as if there is a fundamental right of motorists to drive (and park). The experience with the BWSL, on the other hand, shows that today, some 35,000 fewer cars are using the link than was estimated when it was completed in 2009. In other words, the public is subsidising motorists. With the addition of 22 entry points on the coastal road, the tolls should go up. Some estimate that the full toll from Nariman Point to Kandivali should be upwards of Rs400 one way. If motorists are loath to pay Rs55 for the BWSL, there is the distinct possibility that still fewer will use the coastal road. And, most troubling of all, there are indications that in its drive for populism, the state may do away with tolls altogether, rendering the road a pathway to profligacy. 

The most condemnable move is the BMC’s announcement that it will devote two out of four lanes for a bus rapid transit system (BRTS). This is obviously to assuage critics like the Mumbai Transport Forum that when originally conceived, the coastal road did not cater to public transport, like the BWSL. Nowhere in the world have new highways been built for BRTS: its very raison d’être is to introduce it on existing arteries, however congested. By restricting the space for cars, the BRTS privileges public transport. 

By charging motorists more than the one-time tax, raising parking fees substantially, charging a congestion tax on cars entering south Mumbai and simultaneously improving bus services, trains and the Metro, the city can do away with the coastal road altogether. In any case, the third Metro line, underground from Colaba through Bandra to Santa Cruz, will traverse much of the route on the west coast. 

The author is chairperson, Forum of Environmental Journalists of India (FEJI)