Mumbai: It was Monday morning blues for Mumbaikars due to incessant rains since overnight. Water logging, potholes and an accident almost brought the maximum city to a grinding halt. This comes one week after the financial capital was brought to a standstill.
Commuters were found it difficult especially between 8:30am to 11:30am due to waterlogging in several areas of Kandivali, Malad, Goregaon and Andheri. Vehicular movement had almost stopped on the Jogeshwari-Vikhroli link road (JVLR) and the Western Express Highway (WEH).
Commuters complained that it took them more than two hours to reach Bandra from Borivali, when usually it takes them not more than 40 minutes on this highway on a working day.
Traffic on western express highway is severely impacted because of the construction work for two metros. Cars couldn’t move efficiently and this problem was escalated due to the potholes between the airport flyover at Ville Parle (east) which caused traffic snarls till Goregaon (East).
“The traffic is caused by the mismanagement of the roads and not by the rains, the BMC and MMRDA should have kept in their mind that such problems will increase during the monsoon,” said Shweta Anand, a marketing professional and regular commuter between Goregaon and Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC).
The Andheri subway was shut briefly causing inconvenience to commuters during morning peak hours. Traffic movement on the New Link road connecting, Malad (West) to the Andheri (West) almost came to a halt. The distance that takes 30 minutes to cover, took more than an hour for the commuters to reach their destination.
Anand Neelakantan took to Twitter to share his angst. "#MumbaiRainsLive Entire Western Express highway is chocked. Come on Mumbaikars, keep celebrating resilence when the richest city in the world gets drowned in each rain," he said.
Office goers blamed the ongoing metro work on Malad-Kandivali link road. Local residents stated that the sewage pipes are not being cleared on a regular basis that leads to the water take longer time to pass away.
Yash Saboo said, "Gutters are overflowing, roads are flooding, people are stuck in traffic.... Meanwhile BMC: #MumbaiRainsLive #MumbaiRain #mumbaimonsoon."
They complained the the excessive debris of metro work are clogging the drains which have led to waterlogging even for a brief spell of rains.
“It did not even rain for twenty-four hours and the city has come to halt. What will they do, if there is continuous rainfall for more than a day?" questioned Deepak Shinde, an engineer and regular commuter between Malad and Andheri.
