Mumbai fixated on building expensive metros to ease commuting woes https://frontline.thehindu.com/columns/mumbai-fixated-on-building-expensive-metros-to-ease-commuting-woes/article65778584.ece Debi Goenka Aug 29, 2022 https://newsbigly.com/mumbai-fixated-on-constructing-costly-metros-to-ease-commuting-woes/ At one time Mumbai had two of the perfect transport techniques on this planet: its suburban prepare system and its bus transport system.
No effort was made to develop or improve them as the town grew.
As an alternative, the powers that be are stepping into for metro rail initiatives, that are costly.
Maharashtra: Fadnavis gets back at Aarey with a vengenace https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/maharashtra-fadnavis-gets-back-at-aarey-with-a-vengenace 02 Jul 2022
If the Aarey project goes through, one of the last green spaces in Mumbai will disappear, causing irreparable environmental damage .. the new cabinet’s first decision was to revoke the protection offered to the Aarey Forest as a no-development zone by the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government it displaced. ..The 2014-19 Fadnavis government’s very last act in office was to cut down trees in the Aarey forest to make way for a Metro car shed. The cutting down of trees happened sur..
Debi Goenka, another environmentalist, wonders at Fadnavis’ obsession with the Metro project. He points to the Mumbai Municipal Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal’s statement that by 2020 South Mumbai in its entirety would be under water because of the excavation undertaken in Marine Lines.
Much of south Mumbai sits on land reclaimed from the sea and disturbing the equilibrium underground could prove dangerous for the city, he warns.
“Rather than the metro, improving the quality and frequency of suburban rail services would have been a better option,” Goenka says, charging Fadnavis with making this car shed a prestige issue rather than a decision based on facts and public consultations with geological and ecological factors taken into consideration.
reptitiously in the dark of the night to prevent environmental activists from getting wind of the destruction or giving them time to bring about a court stay on the project.