Traffic menace: HC says restrict cars per family

MUMBAI: Considering Mumbai’s nightmarish traffic congestion, it is perhaps time for the state to restrict “the number of cars per family” and moving some of the

MUMBAI: Considering Mumbai’s nightmarish traffic congestion, it is perhaps time for the state to restrict “the number of cars per family” and moving some of the traffic off the road to “water”.

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“There was a time about a decade ago, when one could commute between Dadar and South Bombay (sic) in just 20 minutes. Doing so is unimaginable now. It takes three hours to travel from Juhu to the Airport at Santacruz. And the stretch between Borivli and Bandra has turned into the biggest traffic fiasco,” said a bench of justice VM Kanade and justice Swapna Joshi, while hearing a public interest litigation on the lack of space for parking vehicles in the city.

The bench asked the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority, the state Urban Development Ministry and the traffic police department to sit together and come up with a holistic policy to decongest the city’s roads.

Inland water transport may be just what the “city needs” to ensure faster commute, the bench went on to say, but added, “Of course, you must assess all security issues first.”

It asked the government to inform the court of the proposal’s feasibility by the next date of hearing. It also asked the BMC if it was willing to revoke the ban imposed on parking vehicles under flyovers in the city. The petitioners had sought the ban on parking under flyovers be lifted so the idle space can be utilised and some respite from traffic congestion is achieved.

In the last hearing, the BMC had opposed the proposal saying it had assessed a security threat and had stopped allowing parking under flyovers. The bench, however, dismissed the argument saying in current times, “nothing was immune to security threats,” and that the state must take steps to assuage these threats.