Suburbs almost sink in dug-up roads

“It takes an hour to travel from Andheri station to my residence near the Marol pipeline even though it is a fifteen minute journey. Even our telephone lines weren’t functioning for 4-5 months because the roads near my house were dug up,” says 25-year-old Mili Lalwani as she recounts the horrors of travelling on the “forever” dug up Andheri-Kurla (AK) Road.

Lalwani, who works with an advertising agency, claims that the road has been dug time and again in the past two years. She says, “We heaved a sigh of relief when the road work was completed two months ago. But, they’ve come back, and are digging it up again to lay the Metro railway and SkyBus network. My phone lines have  been disconnected again.”

Lalwani isn’t the only one complaining. JB Nagar resident Sachin Parab, 55, too feels travelling by road is onerous, said JB Nagar resident. He says, “We can only hope that once the road has been repaired, all the problems will be sorted out.”

Another major problem in the area is traffic congestion, caused by the emergence of several new commercial structures. “The placed quickly becoming a corporate hub,” Lalwani says. Unfortunately, for employees working in offices nearby, a lot of time is spent in transit. Saturdays are the worst because hawkers too, line the roads, causing a bigger congestion.

Rickshawallahs and cabbies too complain of bad roads. Shamsher Khan, a rickshaw driver, said, “We avoid using AK Road in the evenings. During the monsoons, many rickshaws just refuse to travel by the road. It is probably one of the worst roads in the city.”

AK Road is just one of Mumbai’s roads that is constantly dug up. This problem can be attributed to the lack of coordination between the city’s 16 utility agencies, the BMC and MMRDA officials.