Mumbai has been listed as the second most congested city on the planet, according to the leading location technology specialist, TomTom traffic analysis. According to experts, an increase in the number of vehicles on Mumbai’s roads in the past few decades — is the main reason behind the city’s traffic troubles.
According to a citizen's Mumbai March, Insufficient parking space, which has led to illegal parking on the roads, compounded these woes further, with seemingly no solutions by the city’s traffic department and the civic body.
"Although the traffic police do register FIRs against illegally parked cars, experts and activists said there has not been any study to map the problems of commuters and residents and create solutions to ease traffic congestion. There are many stretches in western suburbs where transports trucks and buses are illegally parked and there has been no concrete action against them," said Gopal Jhaveri, founder of Mumbai March
According to team Mumbai March, there is an urgent need for an integrated transport hub for public transport arriving into the city from outside. "The hubs can include bus stations, hence the issues of buses parked on the road will be resolved," said Jhaveri. The inadequate place for parking of public, private and transport vehicles is another problem. This needs to be resolved too by making stringent parking rules.
Illegal encroachment of roads by hawkers, slums etc., "There has been action on removal of encroachment, however, encroachers return and it has become a vicious circle. All these factors can act as a solution to decongest Mumbai roads," Jhaveri added.
According to Sahebrao Gaikwad, former assistant municipal commissioner of BMC the major issues on the three major roads -- S V Road (27.45 m), Link road (36.60 m) and the Western Express Highway (61 m ) traffic congestion throughout the day, High-density vehicle plying, unauthorised parking, a large number of intersections. In the case of S V road, Gaikwad said that majority of roads are not widened to their full width yet.
"The urgent solution that can act as relief is developing small links that are currently blocked, apart from that, roads that are yet to widened to its maximum width. capacity needs to be done as soon as possible. While the issue of public parking lots if being worked out the Problem of Illegal Parking needs to addressed stringently," added Gaikwad.
Team Mumbai March is already negotiating with the state government and BMC officials on possible solutions. On March 7 the group organised a road March stressing the need to start the work on decongesting Mumbai roads
