Mumbai: Small spike in vehicles taking Coastal Road

The Coastal Road was opened on Tuesday, March 12. Pic/Rane Ashish

Day 2 saw a little more traffic on the partially opened Coastal Road, with 19,803 vehicles opting for the new route till 9 pm. On Day 1, around 16,331 vehicles used the Coastal Road till 9 pm. The maximum traffic density on Day 1 was seen between 12 pm and 4 pm with more than 30 vehicles passing per minute. Meanwhile, some road users took to social media, talking about traffic jams they faced at Worli due to badly designed temporary access points to the road. mid-day had highlighted the issue caused by the bottleneck at Worli.

The BMC opened the coastal road to the general public on Tuesday (March 12) from 8 am to 8 pm, except at Worli where entry was restricted to 5 pm only. On Wednesday, vehicles used the coastal road till 9 pm and the vehicle density was slightly higher.

Traffic jam due to bottleneck near Worli access point of Coastal Road. Pics/Sameer Markande

The BMC has made the access point as Bindu Madhav Thackeray Chowk in Worli. Vehicles coming from the Bandra-Worli Sea Link need to take a U-turn which requires more time and ultimately results in longer road time for northbound traffic. mid-day had highlighted the issue on the very first day and now social media users have shared their plight.

Zaheer Memon posted on ‘X' at 11 am on Wednesday, "Worli Sea Face is jammed to get onto the coastal road. It takes 20 minutes to get onto the road. The excitement seems to be short-lived. What is the point even?"

Also Read: Test Drive: How Mumbai Coastal Road will create new bottlenecks

Another user, Aamod Potdar wrote at noon, "20 minutes for northbound traffic to cross the entry point. This stretch never had traffic until today. Hope it's a teething issue but right now it's a loss for both north and southbound traffic".

The Mumbai traffic police replied to both tweets saying their concerns had been shared with authorities for necessary action. Another user replied sarcastically that one more lane would definitely fix traffic. Joson Mascarenhas posted on X, "It's expected… new roads will never solve traffic; just transfer it from one point to another. It's going to induce demand soon and make the situation worse."

Fargad Tarapore said most people had predicted this would happen. "The Sea Link itself is so poorly planned." The maxium number of vehicles that travelled on the Coastal Road on day two were seen between 10 am to 11 am.

16, 331
Vehicles that took Coastal Road on Day 1

19,803
Vehicles that took Coastal Road on Day 2

19,802
No of vehicles that used CR on day 2