Infrastructure problems in Mumbai

Ok, I just came from Mumbai few hours back, spent more time in traveling from bangalore airport to my room than from Mumbai to Bangalore thanks to the “well planned” Bangalore airport which is 60 KM from my place and for people living on other end of city, 80+ KMs, though the good thing is, there are excellent volvo buses which runs in every 20 mins, are fairly cheap and fast, in short, effective!

So I have been to mumbai many times (the last visit was only few months back), this time it was raining hard and I get to see mumbai from end to end and well as expected, it is a city of contradictions. You will see the richest and poorest living on the other side of roads. Too many people everywhere but there is extreme effectiveness (relatively speaking) and efficiency (relatively speaking) everywhere, people mind their own business (nice to see) and are fairly organized (automatically queuing up for taxis/buses). Though the disappointing thing is, being one of the alpha cities of the world and such a big business center of Asia, it still lacks basic drainage as well as world class commuting options. Local train is fine but they are very primitive, overcrowded and slow and what mumbai needs is a much better and faster mode of transport. I had heard of L&T successfully testing Mono Rail in mumbai and hopefully in next couple of years, Mumbai will get both mono rail and metro to ease up the congestion, including number of taxis.

By the way, it was nice to see the “meters” of mumbai taxis/autos not doctored like the once in Bangalore!