Time to remove all red tape on infrastructure projects

Residents hand over a letter to the local station master during their protest on Sunday

South Mumbai residents, especially those around the Girgaum and Charni Road areas who access Charni Road station, have protested recently about lack of connectivity. There are several broken Foot Overbridges (FOBs) and they claim there has been an inordinate delay in repairing them.

Commuters will remember that Charni Road station has always had very good connectivity across the platform and from the roads, too. Several bridges though are a shambles and getting to certain parts of the station is getting long winded for residents.

A report in this paper cited a protest on Sunday with the Railways outlining their specific jurisdiction and saying the bridges come under the municipal authority. While that may very well be true, it resonates little with commuters who are only interested in a Railway infra that is easy to access and takes them to their destination within the station complex, swiftly and easily.

Also Read: South Mumbai residents protest delay in construction of foot overbridges

Dilapidated FOBs may sound deceptively innocuous. Deceptive simply because poor connectivity at stations means people flouting laws and crossing wildly, trying to get across. They may climb railings, squeeze through broken fence4 in a bid to save time and catch that train. This is very high-risk behaviour especially at crowded stations and even with crowds moving towards the station at rush hour, when everybody seems to be in a tearing hurry to reach home.

We also have witnessed these hubs becoming tinder boxes of ‘train rage' so to speak and frustration. Incomplete projects, tough routes, confusion, overcrowding and rule breakers trying to get somewhere at breakneck speed compound the situation.

Clear all red tape stopping the quick and effective rebuilding of these bridges. The city is opening up and, in some time, we are going to see, if this pattern continues, the same rushes that we saw at station in pre-COVID times. Time to get a move on, on those FOBs.

Also Read: How senior citizens living alone in prime locations become targets of land mafia