Why the Coastal Road is a mistake Mumbai cannot afford to make

On July 26, 2005, more than a 1000 people perished due to flooding on the streets of Mumbai - the result of high intensity rainfall of 380 mm for three hours. This year, we saw flooding after rainfall of 38 mm/hour, so one can only imagine the disaster that rainfall of an intensity anywhere close to 2005 levels might cause.

The new drainage system in the city is still incomplete and has been under construction for the past 20 years. At Rs 1,200 crores, it costs one tenth of what the city will spend on the Coastal Road - which will make the city even more vulnerable to floods. The decision to invest in such unnecessary mega projects indicates the glaring disregard for the city's real needs and problems, ignorance of social and environmental consequences and a criminal waste of public resources.

The Coastal Road's own Environment Impact Assessment report (EIA) points out that “had Mumbai’s Mithi river and Mahim creek mangroves not been destroyed,” fewer people would have died during the 2005 floods. Despite these admissions, the Coastal Road proposes the reclamation of 27 hectares of mangroves and irreversible damage to much larger areas during its construction phases. A land filled road which has been proposed in Malad creek, along with heavy construction near the mouth of creeks is likely to cause severe water logging and flooding in upstream areas.

There is a common misconception that urbanisation in Mumbai has largely undone its coastal ecology. Though this may be true in the case of the eastern harbor, the western coastline still retains most of its natural edge with diverse features such as beaches, bays and headlands as well as estuaries. The Coastal Road will reclaim 168 hectares of land from the sea, require excavation of beaches and waterfronts, drilling of the seabed to construct underwater tunnels and the construction of stilted as well as landfilled roads within creeks. It will be an undertaking of unprecedented scale and dimension which will completely transform the shoreline of this historic city.

There have been reports that reclamation for the Bandra-Worli sea link resulted in erosion of the Dadar beach. Extensive landfilling and reclamation for the Coastal Road is likely to cause erosion in other areas, including the northern section of Juhu beach, an important public waterfront. On the other hand, the 91 hectares of reclaimed “public” open spaces are being created by effacing existing natural ones that work much better.

In places where the road will be built on reclaimed land, a 3.5 metre high sea wall will cut off the city physically and symbolically from the sea. According to the EIA report, the “road level is planned in such a way that it will not impact aesthetic and sea side view of commuters,” as though the aesthetic needs of pedestrians and residents are irrelevant. Furthermore, access to public spaces and proximity to residential areas are crucial to the functioning of waterfront recreational areas. An eight-lane highway with uninhibited traffic is quite different from a Marine Drive or Carter Road where pedestrians can prevail over cars. The only access to these new promenades will be through underground tunnels across 50-60 metres of road, making them highly unattractive. Already, the poor use of the promenade at Bandra Reclamation shows the ineffectiveness of such projects.

Reclamation adjoining fish-drying areas and ramp to undersea tunnel at Khar Danda fishing village

The western shoreline provides habitats to the city's fishing communities. Its diverse coastal features are used as coastal commons, supporting the community's livelihood. More than 37,000 people depend on fishing in Mumbai, most of them residing on this side of the city. The entry and exit ramps to one of the proposed under-sea tunnels are located on the beaches of Khar Danda and Juhu Moragaon fishing villages. Heavy construction including the excavation will completely eliminate fishing activity in these villages. In other places, the road or its connectors either pass over fish-drying areas, or cut the community's access to the sea. It is feared that the project will adversely affect fishing as a whole, due to irreversible impacts on the city's delicate coastal ecology. It is no surprise therefore that the fishing community in Mumbai has unanimously decided to oppose the project.

Excavation of ramp to undersea tunnel on Juhu beach in front of Juhu Moragaon fishing village, 
and Coastal Road passing over fish-drying area and mangroves at the mouth of Juhu Nala.

The Detailed Project Report (DPR) of the Coastal Road attempts to show that the project will have larger social benefits. This is the opposite of the truth, as the project is sure to be counter productive from the perspective of transport needs and also completely sidelines cheaper and more efficient alternatives for improving mobility in the city. Moreover, the DPR does not evaluate the larger social benefits that can be achieved if this money is spent on other things, such as sanitation, public transport or public housing.

Each time the project is revised, something new is added as an "attraction" to make it digestible - but every revision makes it sound ever more incredible. Earlier, "green open spaces" were thrown in to green-wash it, now a BRTS is introduced to silence public transport advocates.

However, a BRTS on the Coastal Road is almost a joke. BRTS must aim at reducing car use and shifting people to buses for quicker, cheaper and more sustainable mobility. Being on the edge of the city, the catchment area for a BRTS on the Coastal Road will be quite limited. The DPR has proposed multi-level car parking facilities as though people will drive (with a good deal of suffering on the connectors) to get to the Road, park their cars and take a bus! Mumbai definitely needs a BRTS, not on a coastal road, but on its existing arteries such as the Western Express Highway, the JVLR and SCLR.

As a project that serves to transport not more than 1.5% of the city's population on any given day (the western suburban rail corridor moves more than 25% of the population), the Coastal Road is more of a private amenity than a public good. And despite doing nothing to ease the burden on the congested public transport network, the public will be made to finance the project that does little to ease their own mobility problems.

Urban conservationist and architect Shweta Wagh and Hussain Indorewala are faculty at the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture, Mumbai