Good ideas, bad planning

Elevated corridor: Biggest PPP or longest pipedream?

The Oval Maidan-Churchgate-Virar elevated railway project, whose qualifying bid round was postponed once again from the last week of June to the last week of August, is now in serious danger of not taking off.

With this being the fifth postponement since February, railway officials have begun to lose hope on what was touted as the biggest public-private partnership project in the country.

The way the project has got caught up in bouts of indecisiveness between the state and railways, officials say the project could well soon be the country’s biggest infrastructural pipedream.

State support (dis)agreement
The SSA, which will lay down responsibilities for the state and railways during the construction phase, is hanging fire since January this year. On May 31, when Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and railway board chairman Vinay Mittal came to the city to speak about the SSA with the CM, all they got was an assurance of four committees being formed to ‘expedite’ the SSA. “Which is worse than going back to square one because four committees also means that much more the delay,” said an official.

The depot land dispute
The plan to have the all-important depot for the project on a plot of salt pan land in Mira Road has also run into trouble with both the state and railways unable to agree on who will acquire the land. The state wants the railways to get hold of the plot belonging to the central government, but the railways doesn’t want to get into land acquisition in the state.

Change, the only constant
The project is almost entirely different from the one that was envisaged by the consultancy team of Systra and RITES. The state’s demand that the land acquisition and private buildings being knocked down be brought to a minimum saw the first major tweak. It meant the line is now a cumbersome mix of elevated, underground and ground-level tracks. What it has left the project with is a rail line where trains, at 100 minutes, will run slower than the current Churchgate-Virar trains which cover the 60-km distance in around 85 minutes.

The skewed mathematics
Another worrying aspect is the mathematics behind the financial feasibility of the project. While railway studies are promising the private firms interested in building the line a crowd of 90,000 per hour during peak hours, officials wonder how that will be possible with an eight-coach train, much smaller than the normal Mumbai local.

MMRDA’s silence on noise barrier project deafening
Silently, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) seems to have disposed of its plan to install noise barriers on “all the flyovers of Mumbai”. It had announced the project in September 2010.

In the first phase, Sion Hospital Junction, Hindmata Junction, Thakur Complex, Malad Junction, Santa Cruz Airport Junction, Navghar Junction and Dindoshi Junction flyovers were to get these noise barriers.

In the second phase, it was to be King’s Circle-Tulpule Chowk, Lalbaug Junction, Barfiwala Junction, Suman Nagar Junction and Milan rail overbridge flyovers.

In all, 12,750-metre-long noise barrier was to come up at different locations in Mumbai -- 11 flyovers, two rail overbridges and Sahar elevated road. However, for over two years now, the project has moved ahead only marginally, with just Kalanagar, Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Link Road (outside IIT-Powai) and Dahisar rail overbridge getting these noise barriers.

MMRDA commissioner UPS Madan said, “Most of the flyovers planned are in the middle of arterial roads, where decibel levels are already high. Just by providing noise barriers on flyovers will not help as there will not be any reduction in the decibel levels.”

The most recent to join the list of locations where noise barriers are expected to be installed is the Eastern Freeway; however, the latest round of sound mapping is yet to be done for it.

In the last three budgets, the authority has been allocating funds for the project, despite the decision to not install barriers in densely-populated residential areas. In the budget of 2011-12, Rs10 crore was earmarked, in 2012-13 Rs37.60 crore and in the latest one Rs35 crore.

Public Grievance Day is only a ritual in futility
After several incidents of chain-snatching and theft, residents of LJ Road and Balamiya Lane have been asking the G/north ward office to change the street lamps for brighter lights in the evenings and nights for the past seven months.
The issue has been taken up at the Public Grievance Day since November 2012.

In another case, it has been more than 100 days that a civic activist from F/north ward has raised the issue of stolen grills of storm water drain inlets and about the trenches and broken footpath. These issues too, raised on Public Grievance Day, haven’t yielded any results.

Dahisar residents have been raising the issue of potholes, road-widening, squatting of slum dwellers on roads, lack of public toilets and ill-maintained open spaces on Public Grievance Day since years. No solution yet.

What’s common here? The platform that citizens have been approaching — Public Grievance Day — hoping that it will end their woes has been letting them down, again and again.

Held every month in the ward office, it has hardly resolved citizens’ issues. Month after month, the issues are buried in files and never touched upon. Hoping they will get some solution if they approach higher-level officials, activists take the issues to the seniors, only to find that the buck passes to civic headquarters and, in worst cases, they are even shown the door.

Citizens or ALM members then appeal their case on Lokshahi Din chaired by the civic chief once a month. To seek an appointment for this day, however, is like achieving a milestone.

Anyone who wishes to raise complaints with the civic chief in the Lokshahi Din meeting has to first go to civic headquarters, fill up a form and attach the proofs of written complaints at the ward and zonal level. This has to be done 15 days prior to the meeting day. The complainant then gets a token to be present at the meeting.

“There, too, we are given false assurances. Top officials call the head or seniors of the department concerned and warn them of action if public’s grievances are not solved. Citizens are assured their grievances will be addressed. But, at the ward level, it’s the same story all over again,” said Nikhil Desai, civic activist and AGNI member.

Deputy municipal commissioner (zone II) Kishore Kshirsagar admitted to the flaws in the system but asserted that more than 70% issues are solved on Public Grievance Day. “Citizens get good responses, but some of them never feel satisfied with our answers. They can’t accept anything other than what they had presumed.”