Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway turns into test track of patience

Mumbai: City motorists vividly recall Nov 7, 2022--the day BMC closed Andheri's Gokhale Bridge, a major east-west connector. The agonising commute that Mumbaikars endured for 15 months thereafter is etched in memory.

Exactly one year later in Nov 2023, the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) repeated the gaffe, taking up road concretisation of the arterial Mumbai-Ahmedabad National Highway-48 (NH-48) Highway without ensuring proper road diversions or signage.

The result has turned the road journey along Mumbai-Ahmedabad into a nightmare. The six-lane highway, stretching 120km from Dahisar to Achchhad on the Maharashtra-Gujarat border, is witnessing a drastic increase in traffic congestion and wrong side driving. Some commuters complain that traffic police are conspicuous by their absence. They also report that repair work is visible only on a 2-3km stretch, the rest is idly blocked.

On May 17, a Mumbai-based family's drive to Navsari in Gujarat turned agonisingly painful. After Manor, they managed to cover barely 15-20km in over three hours. The gridlock extended to a few kilometres with trucks, trailers, tempos and cars stuck on the highway in the morning. Traffic barely crawled a few hundred metres every 15-20 minutes, said the frustrated motorist whose unsuspecting family had carried just two water bottles and no food. Midway they decided not to proceed to Navsari and instead headed for Udvada, which took them 7.5 hours to reach instead of four.

NHAI began the white topping work at a cost of Rs 553 crore. But unplanned execution has led to chaos on the neglected throughway. Motorists from Mumbai and Gujarat report that travel time has doubled. The lack of diversions and proper signage has resulted in vehicles driving on the wrong side, multiplying confusion and risk of accident. The authorities have failed to provide alternative routes, leaving motorists no choice but to navigate through the congested and hazardous highway.

NHAI's project director Suhas Chitnis said, "It is true that the work has caused traffic to slow, but motorists need to be patient. Some of them drive in the wrong lanes, bringing traffic on both sides to a standstill, resulting in longer delays." He said NHAI and traffic police's rescue teams are often unable to take towing vans up to the failed vehicles or inter-locked points to clear the traffic jams.

A senior NHAI official blamed errant motorists, mainly truckers, for non-cooperation. They drive through the freshly laid white-topped road and disturb the concrete by leaving deep tyre marks and pockmarks, thus delaying work further, he alleged.

Worse, at least another year will pass before any relief is palpable. "So far we have completed 50km. Concretisation on another 70km towards the Gujarat border should be over by April 2025," Chitnis said.

Work was started after a survey indicated serious problems with the asphalt layers that had started giving way. Moreover, due to increasing urbanisation along the highway, creation of cross drainage systems and underpasses was necessary to tackle increasing traffic and flood systems, Chitnis pointed out.

The NH-48 highway has been notorious for decades due to traffic snarls during monsoon when potholes disrupt the lives of vehicle users. However, the concretisation work gained attention after the tragic death of industrialist Cyrus Mistry in a car accident at Dahanu in Sept 2022.

While motorists do require good roads, NHAI has been criticised for its poor planning and execution of the project.

Patients are the worst hit, said Dr Ajay Sankhe, director of Bhaktivedanta Hospital in Mira Road. Ambulances have no alternate route and while patients manage to come to hospital by train, sending them back by ambulance takes nothing less than six hours. The doctor, himself from Palghar, called it an ill-planned work with lack of signage to direct motorists towards road diversions.

In Feb, district officials admonished NHAI for the "unplanned concretisation" and directed it to adopt measures to reduce traffic snarls on the highway.

Unplanned service roads, or the lack of these along the highways, compound the problem, pointed out Ninad Patil, a businessman who travels between Borivali and Dahanu. Patil said travel time has tripled, and the average speed of vehicles has dropped by half. A journey that once took two hours now takes over four. Motorists complain about concretisation in patches, as well as risky iron rods and gunny bags carelessly strewn about without warning signs.

Even small businesses en route are lamenting their losses. Restaurateur Rajendra Hatiskar from Virar keeps checking traffic updates online before heading to his restaurant in Manor. His 45 minute journey now extends to two hours. Business has been badly affected and he fears it will worsen during the monsoon. Hatiskar feels this concretisation should have been undertaken after the completion of the eight-lane Mumbai-Vadodara Expressway.

Traffic snarls have become so severe that even businessmen from neighbouring Gujarat have switched to trains to avoid spending more time on the road than they do in office.

Parsis from Mumbai are frequent travellers along NH-48 for it leads to the pilgrimage site of Udvada in Gujarat. They too have begun taking the train since the 180 km long, four-hour road journey began stretching to 8-12 hours.

Frequent traveller Filly Bapuna was stranded in traffic with his 88-year-old mother. He said, "The highway is being cemented but shabby work is going on. You get the rumbling effect, even on a finished cemented road. Already there are deep potholes on some stretches while some are covered with tar. In other places, there are deep grooves with sharp edges. The cement has worn out. Vasai, Manor and Charoti are the spots where major congestion occurs." He blamed truckers for not maintaining road discipline and claimed traffic cops are rarely seen.

"Absolute nightmare," agreed Juhu resident Noshirwan Vakil, who travelled along NH-48 recently. "It took ages. Only one lane was open. The road is choked with trucks and we reached Charoti after four hours. Dahisar toll naka was also congested as only two lanes were open. Maybe trucks should not be allowed during certain hours." Vakil has resolved to take the train henceforth.

The onset of the monsoon is expected to further aggravate the situation, leading to inexorable delays and an increased risk of road accidents. The problem has been compounded by the ongoing repair works on the Ghodbunder Road in Thane's Gaimukh, which commenced on Friday. Although heavy vehicles have been restricted on the highway till Vasai and on Ghodbunder Road, trucks and tempos have piled up on the highway, contributing to the traffic jams.

In 2019-2020, Western Railway had a ridership of 1.15 lakh between Virar and Dahanu, the town accessible from NH-48 and located 24 km from Charoti. Still, after the Covid lockdown, one lakh people use local train services in this belt.