Illegal parking, missing lights bedevil Metro sites

Mumbai: As work on the city’s three new upcoming Metro projects has picked up pace, problems like illegal parking adjacent to construction sites along with absence of traffic wardens and missing street lights have made several stretches of these Metro site dangerous. They have also resulted in traffic snarls on stretches of Western Express Highway (WEH) and Link Road.

Currently, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) is carrying out civil construction work on WEH for Dahisar east - Andheri east Metro -7 corridor and on the Link Road for Dahisar DN Nagar Metro -2B corridor. While the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation (MMRC) is carrying out work for underground corridor between Colaba and Seepz in Andheri.

Both the MMRDA and the MMRC have prepared a traffic management plan to reduce the inconvenience faced by motorists and avoid traffic snarls.

The MMRDA has separately allocated `25 crore for spending on appointing traffic wardens, purchasing walkie-talkies and providing patrolling bikes to the traffic department.

However, this correspondent travelled on the whole alignments of the corridors but failed to see traffic wardens managing traffic or traffic police using patrolling bikes to remove illegal parking on the working sites of the Metro corridors.

MMRDA and MMRC both had shut a few lanes for carrying out work, however, on top of this Illegal parking has resulted in motorists losing one lane to drive on the already packed road.

Pravin Darade, additional metropolitan commissioner, MMRDA, said, “We have been taking utmost care to mitigate the problem arising out of the construction of Metro corridors. However, regarding traffic wardens and patrolling it is the duty of the traffic police department, which has to look into it. I’ll also inform them to be more careful in case of lapses.”

Speaking about missing street lights on the alignment, Mr Darade, said, “While shifting utilities for the starting work on the median of the road few street lights were removed. Later, it is the duty of the electric supplier to have lights installed elsewhere. For now, we have requested our contractors to install temporary lights.”

When contacted, R. Ramana, executive director, MMRC, said, “We have provided enough support to the traffic department in order to check on illegal parking on the construction site and now it is on them to utilise them. Our contractors are already paying to the traffic department for appointment of traffic wardens to minimise problems of motorists.”  

Meanwhile, repeated attempts to reach Milind Bharambe, joint commissioner of police for traffic did not yield any reply.