Stuff I wrote for my college campus newspaper - 19

MRTS in Mumbai

By Sanket Kambli

MRTS stands for Mass Rapid Transit System. Here transit stands for ‘an elevated rail’. Since the last four years BMC has been planning to deploy some kind of MRTS in Mumbai. Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) was given the charge of managing this venture and recently they have sent out tenders, which is sure sign of the fact that MRTS will soon come up. MRTS is initially supposed to link Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar, which is a 144 km stretch and depending on feasibility it will implemented elsewhere .And if this MRTS thing is hard to imagine, you should to take a clue from Konkan Railways pet project ‘The Sky Bus’, which should give you an appropriate vision of what MRTS is. But the question is do we really need an approx. 1200 crore project. The answer is ‘Yes’, because this city needs an alternative transport system very much ,as whatever is available is turning out to be grossly insufficient, and anybody who travels by our local trains knows what I am trying to say. Some of you may say why we can’t upgrade the existing transport system. But here we have a problem, first let us consider road transport, the number of vehicles on road is increasing but the augmentation in the road networks can’t be at the same pace and its fallout is traffic congestion, which has become common place. Then if we consider our local trains, it is one hell of a task to increase the number of tracks, on the already huge network of suburban railway, and there is always limit to the number of trains they can send. And if someone wants us to ape New York or apna Delhi and build a underground transport system, then that is one idea which begs for reasons, as to why it wasn’t considered, maybe the underground trains won’t look as high tech as trains zipping on tall beams, maybe they won’t be able to match the spectacle of the ‘Sky Bus’. Let’s hope MRTS starts soon and elevate our transit woes.