Blame Game

Friends, today’s post is about Mumbai city. Few days back, you all will remember that Road over bridge (ROB) connecting east and west side of Andheri crashed and its part fell down over the railway tracks. That time also there was a blame game between Brihan Mumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and Western Railway (WR) regarding the ownership of maintenance of the ROB. After that it was decided by the Govt that all ROB over the railway tracks to be inspected and they took the help of Mumbai IIT. Few days back the the IIT Structural Engineers submitted the report that one of the ROB  on Lower Parel station is in very poor condition and it should be stopped for use.

The situation is that the there is a main Entry/Exit of the Lower Parel station, which is connected with this bridge, and there is one more smaller entry/exit on the other west side of the station. Additionally this ROB has a very heavy vehicular traffic as it connects west and east side, and secondly there is one more local station, which is part of Central Railway, Currey Road from where commuters come to Lower Patel station using this ROB to come to Western Railway.

Yesterday all of sudden without even notifying  alternate routes for vehicular traffic, this ROB which is known as  Delisle Road bridge was closed permanently even for pedestrian use. So yesterday morning was  a total chaos in the station area, the picture shown above is  the scenario at the other entry/exit  of the Lower Parel station. The scene shown is from the morning peak hours office time, that is from 8 am to 10 am. This Lower Parel -Elphinstone Road belt is having about 1.3 Crore Sq feet office area, with daily foot fall of about 3.5 lakhs commuters at both Lower Parel and Currey Road station. Yesterday, Commuters took minimum 30 minutes to come out of the Lower Parel Station. A bottleneck occurred at the staircase(which is used for both incoming and outgoing commuters) because width of the staircase is half of the lane width. This situation prevailed for almost 2 hours of peak office time. Motorists who had to take long detour to reach their destination complained of delays up to 2 hours as there was traffic jam of almost 4 km.

Yesterday, the situation was such that all the office goers  are now battle scary for stampede like situation at the station. Most of the offices have started considering Flexi Office timing for their employees.

In the evening the WR announced that Foot Over Bridge(FOB) for pedestrians, connected to the ROB will be open for the pedestrian movement in the morning in west-east and in the evening east-west direction.

Now Mumbaikars must get ready to face the prolonged traffic snarl due to fight between BMC and WR over the reconstruction of  the unsafe Delisle Road bridge. WR said that it can not undertake the construction of ROB as it lands on BMC’s land. There are lots of utilities such as pipes and cables passing thru the BMC area. The Municipal Corporation is right authority to handle such issues. While the BMC says that the WR can undertake any construction above the tracks. BMC has already communicated this to WR that the reconstruction cost would be borne by BMC. As per the BMC, the Railways Act 1989 states that over and under bridge works are to be executed by them and the cost to be borne by the Municipality. As per the present situation  reconstruction will take minimum 2 years, as the tendering process will take 3 months, 3 months for demolishing the bridge, thereafter construction may toke 18 months.

The fact is that both WR and BMC woke up very late to the dilapidated condition of the bridge, as it is evident from the IIT report, which called for immediate closure.

Now Mumbaikars are least concern who has to build the bridge, in the end it is taxpayers money which is going to be used and who spends the money is least of our concern.  We have seen when ever some calamity happens different wings of the govt starts blaming each other and we all are fed up this kind of childish blame game. Now the time has come that the two should stop trying to pass the buck and get down to the task of rebuilding the ROB on war footing.

What you say my friends.

Waiting for your feed backs/comments/views.