Big things are happening in India’s  financial and entertainment capital.   Its contiguous urban population is nearing 25  million and its land is surrounded by water,   making it the world’s second-most densely  populated major city. But there’s hope that   a set of five transportation megaprojects -  that are under construction simultaneously   throughout the city - will ease  the movement of people and goods,   and help position it to become a global  power center by the middle of the century. This is Mumbai, the transforming megacity. Surrounded by the Arabian sea, Mumbai - which  means “mother” in Marathi, the local language - is   the heart of the state of Maharashtra, the  second-most populous country subdivision on Earth   and the single largest contributor to India’s  Economy. What was a group of islands were - by   1845 - merged into one landmass through multiple  land reclamation projects. But it was a turning   point in American history that did arguably  the most to place Mumbai on its modern path. Had it not been for the Civil War in the United  States, Mumbai probably wouldn’t have been as important   a city as it is today. That source of raw  cotton for the newly industrialized England   suddenly dried up due to the Civil War.  Simultaneously they managed to open the Suez canal   which cut the journey to London into one-third. So  what was a 90-day journey became a 30-day journey.   When you come out of the Suez and you come out  of the Red Sea, the port dead ahead was Mumbai.   So Mumbai just happened to be at the right place  at the right time with the whole of Maharashtra’s   rich cotton growing culture. One of the things  the British brought to us were the railways,   mainly to move goods from the hinterland directly  to the port. And the port really grew like mad. Today, Mumbai’s seaport handles most of the  container traffic entering and exiting India,   creating many jobs for its residents. Ramesh  Shinde commutes by train to work at the port. Ramesh Shinde: “I work at a shipbuilding  company, Mazagon Dock, building submarines.   We have already built 5 submarines and  we’re currently building the sixth.” The prospect of good, stable employment has been  attracting people from across India for decades. In India we have a huge problem  with people migrating to the metros.   You can’t prevent people from  coming to the city of Mumbai,   they have as right to come here as any  other Indian. You either figure out how   to make things better, or you vote in people  who figure out how to make things better. The challenge is that the city’s  population has grown far faster   than their government's ability to build  infrastructure and it’s been happening   for so long now that no matter who they  elect, there is a lot of catching up to do. Infrastructure was being built to try and keep up with the  needs of the city. But from the 1970s onwards we   had a lot of setbacks in spending money. We had  a complete lack of foresight. You know, when you   reach 10 million people and your infrastructure is  good for two, and you bring up your infrastructure   to 10 million people, by the time you do that it's  already surpassed 15 million and it’s inadequate. To close the gap, five massive transportation  builds are happening at the same time. The first is the Mumbai metro,  one of the most ambitious and   important transit initiatives in history. “Right now our suburban  railway is lifeline of Mumbai.   This suburban railway carries around nine million  passengers. The new metro network which we are   creating will be carrying around 7 million or 8  million passengers. We are almost doubling it.” Gigantic tunnel boring machines are being  used to construct eight lines at the same   time through the living city. They can’t come  soon enough. The existing suburban railway is   completely maxed out, carrying three times  more passengers than originally intended. Not only is this extremely  stressful, it’s dangerous.   Around 2,000 people die every year on these  tracks, conditions that cause constant delays. “There is no fast train and it doesn't come on  time. If the train on the central line doesn't  come on time, then we miss the  connecting western line train.” “It is difficult to get on  the train for a non-Mumbaikar.   It can get very crowded. I’m a local and  I can’t even get on the Virar train.”   The first two above-ground metro lines opened  earlier this year to positive reviews.   “With the metro, we sit in Air Conditioning  and travel for 30 rupees. So it is  very convenient. Otherwise, imagine how much  money one would spend on a taxi or a rickshaw.” The most important, arterial line will run 33 km  under many of Mumbai’s most historic buildings. “This is going to be the first underground  metro that the city is going to witness.   I live right outside what is going to be an  underground metro station soon. I think it’s   going to make travelling very convenient. And it’s  underground so there is very little damage to the   built heritage or built parts of the city.  The way the networks are being built right   now it’s made connectivity so much easier and  convenient. You get out of your railway station,   you have a skywalk that’s connecting you to  a metro line, and from there directly home. I remember speaking to RA Rajeev. He said  that while the first metro project took   about 10 years they were really hoping  to make the rest of the lines quicker,   and we’re seeing that, we’re seeing that  happen in the rest of the city, the suburbs. The current plan is for 14 lines  to make up a 360-kilometer network.   It will also help ease traffic congestion. The road is very, very stressful. Clutch,  brake, clutch, brake. There is a lot of traffic.   Driving a car is very difficult. And what’s  more difficult than driving is parking.   That’s also a problem, no parking spaces. Mumbai’s layout means its most popular areas  are in its southern end, like Bollywood, India’s   booming film and media industry. Many of its stars  live in Bandra, a lush, upscale neighborhood.   A little further south is the city’s  historic heart, home to government agencies,   the main business district and university,  luxury hotels, and famous landmarks–including   the Gateway of India, the Chhatrapati Shivaji  Terminus railway station, and the ensemble   of Victorian and Art Deco buildings that  face each other across Oval Maidan Park. However, this area is so congested that it can   take well over an hour to  get to the airport by car. That’s where project number two comes  in. The Coastal Road will be a 29.2-km   expressway that will cut this travel time to  just 20-25 minutes when it opens next year. As a civil engineer it is a dream project.  It has everything a civil engineer can dream   of including reclamation, sea wall, bridges,  tunnel. We’ve had some world records on this   also. We’ve had 456 meters of mining  in a month, which has never happened. The coastal road project was a dream in India   and now it is being built so there is a lot of progress in India. The project also creates 10.5km  of non-stop waterfront promenade   with various greenspaces and will improve the  ease of travel to Sanjay Gandhi National Park,   the world’s largest tropical urban forest. However, the highway will also be a  massive concrete barrier that cuts   off much of the seafront, replacing  that view with loud vehicle traffic.   Cautionary tales of such an approach can be  found in the US cities of Seattle and Boston,   which recently spent billions to open up  access to their precious waterfronts by   tearing down viaduct highways to reroute  traffic through newly dug tunnels instead. Other concerns include encouraging more car  ownership which could make air pollution and   traffic worse; that it neglects the needs  of carless residents who make up a majority   of the city’s population; and it seems to  ignore perhaps the city’s biggest threat. When you build roads that are 1 km  into the sea, you need more roads   to connect that. You’re increasing your  built infrastructure. That increases cost,   that increases the damage that you are doing to  the environment. You’re reclaiming your seas for   this, at a time when there is a threat of the  city submerging. We need to seriously think   about whether a coastal road is really going to  benefit the city 50 years down the line. Are we   going to see more water logging incidents during  the rain? None of that has really been thought of. Mumbaikars call elevated highways,  like the coastal road, flyovers.   Another is the Sewri-Worli Connector–the  third major project. It will cut through   the island so vehicles can cross the  city uninterrupted from coast to coast. This taxi driver is constantly navigating its  construction. Based on conversations with his   customers, he has a good idea of how this  new piece of infrastructure will be used. “When the bridge is built, the locals who have  to go into the suburbs, will go from below.   The rest of the people will  go up over the flyover.” So we first had a whole  series of flyovers in Mumbai,   but they were all North-South. So  East-West connectivity was terrible. Kurush lives in the satellite city of Navi  Mumbai, which will benefit from the fourth   project. The Trans Harbour Link is a 21.8  km bridge for vehicles to quickly cross   the bay-like inlet of the Arabian Sea that  separates the island city from the Indian   mainland. When it opens this year, it will  be the longest sea bridge in the country. It’s not just a transportation corridor,   it is - and will be - and engine of economic  growth. So what this bridge does is, actually,   it brings the mainland within a distance of 12-15  minutes, adding a huge land parcel to Mumbai. With the bridge in place, the  fifth project makes a lot of sense.   The Navi Mumbai International Airport will provide  what many other major global cities already have:   one airport dedicated to international  flights and a second for domestic travelers. With an urban area nearly twice as dense as  the national capital, it is vital that Mumbai’s   transportation system works. So even though  these five big projects have taken decades,   now that the steel has been laid and the concrete  poured, an even more ambitious vision is emerging. The city has transformed it’s been  moving toward becoming megapolis. We’re looking at something all the way to the  Gujarat border in the north, to Mubar in the east,   and to Mangaon on the Bombay-Goa highway  in the south. That is what we realized the   city of Mumbai is going to be, and that’s  the Mumbai Metropolitan Region ultimately. But an example of the constantly evolving  tradeoffs to continual development is Gorai,   a part of the city that has remained  fairly immune to its sprawl. Lying   just across Manori creek, it is only  accessible from the south by ferry. In the evening the place is totally deserted.   You don’t feel like you’re in  Mumbai. This is a beautiful place. Hillary has seen firsthand  how fast things are changing. People are crazy for money, everybody wants a fast  life. Everybody sold their property. Before there   was not a single wall over here. Now since you  buy the property you construct your own wall. Hillary says he’s content making about $8 USD a  day, even though he has to spend hours driving   15 km to the closest compressed natural gas pump  and wait in line each time he needs to fill up.   Authorities want to build a bridge to connect  Gorai - and its beaches - to the rest of the city.   They say this will give residents like  him more services, like gas pumps. They’ll give you options. If  you need a gas pump over here,   we have to construct the bridge. To  win something we are losing something. But if they construct the bridge and all the  beauty of this place is going to vanish. Oh   mangroves and everything–everything will be  disappeared over here. No land will be saved. So even though his income could improve,  he doesn’t want the bridge. He thinks it   will ruin the relatively quiet life he and  his wife enjoy among the water-absorbing   mangrove ecosystem that helps protect them  from rising seas and storm flooding. Most   of the rest of Mumbai’s mangroves  have been completely destroyed. Nobody else is destroying the nature, we ourselves  are destroying the nature. And we are blaming the   nature. What nature can do? Nature stands still.   Take care of the nature, everything will be  fine. If you play with the nature you have   to pay the fine. If you cooperate with  nature, nature will cooperate with you.

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