The Mumbai Metro One - Who to blame?

The Mumbai Metro One, which runs from Ghatkopar to Versova, just about 11km long has always been very popular & sees a daily ridership of about 4.5 Lakhs now. Apparently this line has been the fastest of any metro in India to reach the milestone of 250 million riders in 957 days! (wiki)

Having been constructed in one of Mumbai’s most congested corridors, this is not really a surprise.

However given the line is designed to handle 6 coach rakes, but currently runs only 4 coach rakes, the ridership has significant headroom to grow!

But if you were to visit Ghatkopar or Andheri (the 2 main stations on the line), today, you may feel the metro line is already beyond its capacity. That's because both these stations are built in some of the most congested areas of Mumbai, ie in the neighborhood of the respective suburban railway stations.

The situation is so bad that even when the station is handling just one rake at a time, there is not enough space on the platform to accommodate the passengers boarding & de-boarding. Almost every evening the Ghatkopar station also gets flooded with de-boarding passengers & then the operator resorts to jugaad solutions like switching off the escalators to somehow slow down the flow of passengers. Holding passengers on the platform becomes necessary because the concourse is already packed with passengers from the earlier rake. And all this has to be executed with very good coordination by the staff. I dont have any experience of Andheri station, but the situation is unlikely to be much different.

Infact this issue has now even reached the Railway ministry.

The scenario makes me wonder how were safety certificates issued for these stations in the first place. Note that the line is only working at about 2/3^rd of its planned capacity!

Ideally the authorities should have built much much bigger stations at Andheri & Ghatkopar, but for that they would have had to acquire the neighbouring land. Since land acquisition in India, even for public infrastructure projects is fraught with so much litigation and litigation with delays. My guess is that the powers of the time decided to avoid / minimize the litigation & resultant delays by simply shrinking the stations to fit into the space available.

So who is to blame for the current scenario?

• The developers of the line?
• The neighbourhood dwellers who may not have wanted to part with their land?
• The Judiciary, for not being able to rule on these issues quickly?

Deciphering this is quite critical at this juncture. Especially because Mumbai is embarking on a slew of public infrastructure projects, and there is no dearth of opposition & litigation at every corner. 

Very often, poor planning by the authorities is seen as a key problem for most of our projects faltering. But the constraints under which our planners operate also are real (though all constraints are man made).

Like its said about so many of our projects: Conceived in the 1900s, planned in the 2000s and executed perhaps 10-20 years later. So almost every project is already decades behind on its first day!