Anagha Deodhar, 31, an economist, who lives in Malad (West) and works in a firm in Goregaon (East), says she goes to office by train even though it's the next suburb. “It has been over six months that I have been travelling by train. Earlier, I used to drive down to my office, but Mumbai's traffic condition is very unpredictable. Many times, I have spent over an hour to reach from home to work.”
A commercial pilot and Oshiwara resident, Punit Shenoy, 24, too is public transport commuter. “Whenever I am not flying, I make sure I travel only by train in the city. I have two cars, but I am ready to sacrifice the comfort of travelling in my own vehicle to reaching somewhere on time,” he said.
More and more Mumbaikars are gradually opting for public transport, especially local trains, as it not only saves time but also money. With the city becoming overcrowded with each passing day, it has become difficult to even find decent space to walk on. The number of vehicles has been going up and many motorists have reached their saturation point with respect to driving.
The total area Mumbai (excluding national park) is 437.71 sqkm. The road length for the said area is 1,941 km. According to the data available with the traffic police, the vehicular traffic in Mumbai constitutes 12% of the total vehicular strength in state. There are more than 20 lakh vehicles registered with Mumbai’s regional transport offices and each day at least 450 more are getting registered.
The internationally accepted density of vehicles per kilometre road length is 300 approximately, in Mumbai, it has already crossed 1,000.
The traffic police have been encouraging the use of public transport as it's the only way of reducing the number of vehicles on roads.
Dr BK Upadhyay, joint commissioner of police (traffic), said, “City's traffic problem can be dealt with only if more and more people use public transport. We have been in constant talks with the authorities to improve connectivity and condition of public transport so that people are tempted to opt for it out of will and not force.”
300 is the accepted density of vehicles per km
1,000 is the density of vehicles per km in city
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