This is a letter I have posted to the newspapers. What is going to become of Haji Ali, Horniman Circle, Kalbadevi, Bhuleshwar, Peddar Road etc. etc.? bye bye I guess! I like the Bandra-Worli sealink. It is beautiful. I see it from my window. It hasn’t reduced the traffic on Cadell Road at all. The JJ flyover too is great fun. I love going over it. Have you been underneath it though? The noise is unbelievable and the traffic- the usual slow snarl. I think it is a shame how this city is run, no accountability, no common sense, no vision, and no one at the top. Dear Sir/Madam, Recent articles on new road projects linking south Mumbai beg the question: do we really want more cars cluttering up the space? Even old buildings in Kalbadevi are seen as impediments to road widening. Why not take a look at strategies developed in European cities with many more years of dealing with traffic? Traffic planning there has been developed to limit as much as possible vehicular movement in city centers. This is being accomplished by expensive inner city day passes, reduction of lane space for cars, promotion of bicycle, pedestrian, and public transportation. Contrary to what I hear many people say, Mumbai has one of the best public transport systems in the world. Unfortunately no importance is given to modernization and development. The suburban trains and buses have changed little over the past 30 years and the ticket queues have only grown longer. In Mumbai the automobile is destroying a beautiful city. The latest scheme, an expressway on reclaimed land along the coastline would permanently disfigure the city. Along with the expressway along the eastern that is planned to end somewhere around the Asiatic library, south Mumbai will see a huge increase in vehicular traffic. Like the hideous skywalks (useless), monorail project (going from where to where?), cluster developments, the Shivaji memorial or slum rehabilitation, very little thought is going into these projects. The huge waste of public money that was the Bandra-Worli Sealink and especially the fiasco of the Worli-Haji Ali part of that project should have given us some lessons. I suggest leave certain things alone, and instead develop the already existing infrastructure, increase the east-west connectivity, and develop the one really sensible project- the bridge from Sewri to Nava Sheva. James Stevenson
