‘Bus corridors will happen in Mumbai within next one year’

Dedicated bus corridors, which have long been touted as the cheapest and the quickest modes to decongest road traffic, might finally be ready for a roll-out.

SVR Srinivas, additional metropolitan commissioner, Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), on Saturday, indicated that dedicated bus lanes will be put in place across the city within the next one year. Dedicated bus corridors, or the Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS), were first mooted by MMRDA in 2002, and subsequently dreaded, going by the experience of BRTS in Delhi and Pune. Votaries of the system, however, blame it on haphazard planning and implementation.

Srinivas made the announcement at a panel discussion on infrastructure at the State Summit organised by DNA and Zee 24 Taas at Hotel Taj President in Cuffe Parade. Consulting Engineering Services (CES) Pvt Ltd, appointed by the MMRDA to submit a blueprint on the project, has already indicated that BRTS was feasible for the 25km stretch between Bandra and Dahisar on the Western Express Highway and between Sion and Cadbury junction along the Eastern Express Highway.

The session was chaired by Nitin Gadkari, president of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and former state PWD minister, and moderated by Jaidutt Kshirsagar, minister, public works department (public undertakings). Gadkari said, “Unless transport, along with water, power, and communications systems, is improved, further development of Mumbai and peripheral areas will be restricted.”

Kshirsagar said the state government was committed to upgrading infrastructure, but rued public interest litigation, which, he claimed, were often frivolous and came in the way of development.

Augmenting rail transport — the city’s lifeline — was also discussed in detail. Dr PC Sehgal, managing director, Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation (MRVC), said, “Not much had been done in the last two decades to boost infrastructure in the rail network. The world over, infrastructure comes first and people next. Here, it is the reverse.”

Claiming that fund shortage was impeding infrastructure development in the sector, Sehgal endorsed the state's plan to levy a one-time development surcharge on builders taking up construction activity in and around major infrastructure projects.

“Builders promote their projects by stating the proximity to the station. The shorter the distance, the pricier the property,” he said, adding that “a portion of the levy should be diverted towards further development of the railway network”.

While the politicians and bureaucrats focused on the need to better basic infrastructure, private entrepreneurs on the panel made a plea for a fast-track system for clearance of big ticket projects. “We need to find a way to speed up the process. Clearances presently eat up a whole lot of time,” said K Venkatesh, senior vice-president (development projects business), L&T. Lalit Jalan, CEO, Reliance Infrastructure, concurred with him. “The Metro-I rollout would have been smoother had all the land been made available to us at the start of the project,” Jalan said. Reliance has been assigned the task of setting up both Metro routes. Venkatesh suggested a need to bring all those involved or affected by a project on a common platform to resolve niggling issues and crash implementation time. "The stakeholders need to sit down before the start of the project and resolve issues upfront," Venkatesh said.

Vinayak Mavinkurve, senior director and co-head (Project Finance and Principal Investment), Infrastructure Development Finance Company, said infrastructure development should go hand-in-hand with real estate development. Vijay Sarma, associate director, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, meanwhile, said that public private partnerships could be used more effectively in the municipal sector to improve basic infrastructure. He advocated the need to revise user charges in highly subsidised sectors like water supply.

MMRDA's Srinivas said public transport has to be efficient, affordable and has to ensure passenger safety and good connectivity. He said efforts are being made to achieve this in the coming years.