MMRDA - Projects - Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project

Mumbai is the commercial and financial capital of India, generating about 5% of India’s GDP and contributes over one third of the country’s tax revenues.

In addition, it handles major part of the port traffic of the country. With rapid urbanisation and industrialisation during the last three decades, the populationg rowth has been mainly in the suburbs i.e. north of Mahim and Sion while the population growth in the island city has remained more or less stagnant. The population in the suburbs increased from 5 million in 1981 to 8.8 million in 2001, while the population in the island city increased from 3.28 million to 3.30 million during the same period. The city of Mumbai with its present population of over 12 million generates more than 10 million daily passenger trips catered by suburban railway and public transport bus services provided by BEST. The ever growing vehicular and passenger demands, coupled with constraints on capacity augmentation of the existing network, have resulted in chaotic conditions during peak hours.

The five main north-south roads in the suburbs are not fully developed to the planned width, have many bottleneck points and constraints due to large number of intersections with major and minor roads. Similarly, the major east-west links proposed in the Wilbur Smith Associate Study of 1962 have not been finalised. During the last 4 decades there has been growth in vehicular ownership in Greater Mumbai, particularly in the suburban areas, resulting in immense pressure and increasing bottlenecks. The vehicular population in the last four decades increased from 1.5 lakhs in 1971 to 1.29 million in 2001.

The World Bank funded MUTP focuses mainly on strengthening of mass transport particularly improvements in suburban railway services in terms of efficiency and capacity, with very few proposals of road improvements.

On the above background and looking beyond MUTP improvements and considering the future travel demand by growing population, it has been considered necessary to take urgent steps to strengthen the road infrastructure in Mumbai. With a view to supplement MUTP, MMRDA initiated the process for an ambitious project known as Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project (MUIP) with the main objective of road network improvements and efficient traffic dispersal system in Greater Mumbai.