Mumbai Looks to Sea to Solve Traffic Mess

Mumbaikars may soon be able to avoid the snarling traffic on the city’s roads—by taking to the sea.The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation Ltd., or MSRDC, which is the state’s road and infrastructure development arm, started accepting bids this week for building the city’s first water transport system.

The financial bid was opened to the sole bidder, a consortium comprising of two local firms, Pratibha Constructions and Kakade Infrastructure, and Inaikara, a Malaysian infrastructure company.

The planned project will ferry commuters from the southern business district of Nariman Point to the far flung Western suburb of Borivli in just about 40 minutes. The 45-kilometer commute can now take up two hours by road. Even with a train it takes between 50 to 80 minutes.

Though Mumbai is a peninsula surrounded by the Arabian Sea on three sides, water transport has not been an option for its giant army of commuters who travel from the northern suburbs to the business district on its southern tip. While there are a few private ferries that ply between the Gateway of India and Alibaug or the Elephanta Caves to the East, those boxy boats are mostly for tourists.

The north-south route will be the first such passenger ferry initiative for the city and will carry 35,000 commuters back and forth each day, according to Sonia Sethi, the Road Development Corp.’s vice-chairman and managing director.

The Passenger Water Transport project will be executed in four phases and take as many years for completion. It will include building six terminals—Nariman Point, Bandra, Juhu, Versova , Marve and Borivli. The stretch from Nariman Point to Versova will be the first phase of development and is expected to be completed in one-and-a-half years once the project gets approval.

The waterway is expected to cost 12 billion rupees ($260 million) and will work on a Public Private Partnership model based on division of risk.“The MSRDC will provide the operator exclusive rights to ply on the west coast, in addition to real estate for developing terminals and customer related facilities,” Ms. Sethi said. “The consortium in-charge will be responsible for the financing of the project,” and given a concession period of 29 years to recover its investment.

However, this project may still be six months away from a take-off. The Road Development Corp. has yet to present the plan to its board, which is scheduled to meet next week. The recommendations will then be referred to the state government’s Cabinet Committee.

Any citizen of Mumbai, or most other megacities in India, will be skeptical of the timeline as the city rarely delivers on its promises. Others have tried to capitalize on the city’s waterways and failed.

In the 1970s one city organization’s hovercraft service from Navi Mumbai lasted only a few days because of the high cost of tickets and maintenance. Again in the late 1980s, a joint venture of private companies attempted hovercraft services from Juhu to Belapur via Nariman Point, but had to shut down due to financial problems.