A few hrs of rain: commute turns crawl

A few hours of heavy rain on Friday left the city grappling with the same old commuting woes - traffic snarls, delayed suburban trains and flooding in low-lying areas.

A few hours of heavy rain on Friday left the city grappling with the same old commuting woes - traffic snarls, delayed suburban trains and flooding in low-lying areas.

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Several spots in Parel, Dadar, Mahim, Kurla and Andheri witnessed flooding, leading to 18 complaints of water-logging within two hours.

While the civic body had cited the barriers in the storm-water drain network on ES Patanwala Road in Byculla as the major reason behind flooding in south Mumbai on Sunday and Monday, no such excuse could be given for flooding in Parel and Dadar on Friday, as the barriers had now been removed.

In a first, citizens complained of water-logging on SV Road and Linking Road.

"Flooding is not a common occurrence on these roads. It seems the situation has deteriorated this monsoon. The BMC has fallen short in its pre-monsoon preparations," said Aftab Siddiqui, a Khar-based activist.

Siddarth Rao, another commuter, said, "Travelling from Powai to the Eastern Express Highway doesn't take me more than 10-15 minutes. With the heavy traffic on the Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Link Road, it took me more than an hour to cover the same distance."

After receiving flak from locals for non-functional dewatering pumps in many areas, 79 dewatering pumps were operated across the city to tackle flooding.

"The first few spells of rain leads to clogging of dewatering pumps because of the garbage collected in them," said Laxman Vhatkar, chief engineer (storm water drains). He added that the problem would not arise henceforth. "The functioning of these pumps was smoother compared to last week," said Vhatkar.