Found this video through a WhatsApp forward about the Mumbai - Pune Missing Link and i literally feel so so embarrassed that this missing link was created recently and it could not sustain one rainy season i mean what the actual F. Infrastructure chya nava khaali ijjat ghalavnya chi kaama aahe hi.
Just 2 months okay ajun jasta vel nahi lagla
Today cities like Bangalore are filled with potholes . Why not allow private citizens to fill up the pot holes near by their respective areas? Like let's assume the road in front of a appartment or a school or office is full of broken roads and potholes .... Then those flat owners can pool a small sum per head of Rs 1000 to 2000 and call apon some private road contractor to fill in those patches of road ... If done on city scale roads will be better and it can avoid fatal road accents due to potholes. Govt must do their job . If not at least they must allow people to do it ... Govt also will not care for people even if they die and they will neither allow people to solve their problems is very criminal in nature . Just a idea to change our lives..
Im really mad right now, I heard Mumbai had awesome beaches and is supposr to be the Miami of India, but damm...when i looks at it through Google earth it was nothing but awful, and seeing highways on the ocean mad me more mad😭
Stood at a signal near Hebbal last week. Counted vehicles for about 10 minutes out of pure boredom.
Bikes and scooters. Overwhelmingly. Then autos. Then BMTC buses packed so full people were hanging off the door. Cars were maybe 20-25% of what I saw. But the entire road, 6 lanes, two flyovers, a grade separator that took 4 years to build, existed almost entirely to move those cars slightly faster.
The bus stop was a painted line on the shoulder. No shade. No seating. Standing in exhaust fumes.
This isn't a Bangalore problem. Drive through any Indian city and the logic is the same. Road widening projects always eat into footpaths first. Flyovers go where car traffic is heavy. Parking bylaws require developers to build more car parking than actual homes in some zones. Signal timings are calibrated for vehicle throughput not pedestrian safety.
Meanwhile the guy on the BMTC gets 90 seconds to cross 6 lanes if he's lucky.
Census data is pretty clear on this. Less than 30% of Indian households own a car. But somewhere along the way city planning decided that car ownership was the default and everything else was a problem to manage around it.
The weird part is we have examples of it done differently right here. Pune's river promenade. Parts of Chandigarh. Connaught Place on a Sunday when they pedestrianise it. The moment you take cars out, people actually use the space. Families, walkers, vendors, everyone. Turns out people like cities that are built for people.
But those are exceptions and usually temporary ones.
I think the real problem is who sits in planning meetings. It's not the BMTC commuter. It's not the guy on the bike. It's people who drove to that meeting and will drive home after it.
What's it like in your city? Is there even one road that feels like it was designed for someone who doesn't own a car?
I think this project covers almost everything I think we need on a street. Dedicated 2 lanes for traffic, car, bike, and big vehicle parking. Wide footpaths, benches under tree canopy, restrooms, permanent shops, temporary vendors (who do not block the entire footpaths), elevated zebra crossing, dustbins, signboards, street lights. Every Indian street should kind of look like this. Quality of life will improve, and there will be less dust pollution as well.
A dedicated bicycle lane is missing, which was sacrificed for wider footpaths, which I think is reasonable, as bicycles can still use active lanes instead.
Now we need to make sure those temporary vendors pay, dispose of their garbage properly, do not extend beyond the dedicated area and block footpaths, and tell their customers to use dustbins and not to park on the street (like that typical Thar driver did).
What do y'all think?
Location: https://maps.app.goo.gl/dtH91NHY8z5xjx2K8
Source: Frame 1 Before Credit: Sahana Karanth, rest Google Street View.
If you're interested, you can find more older photos and DPR details below:
https://mangalurusmartcity.net/contents/2354926.37956279-789561.327971293.pdf
My office is 4km from the nearest metro station. You'd think that's fine right. Just take the metro.
Except there's no direct bus to the station. Autos refuse below ₹80 for that stretch. The footpath to walk it doesn't exist for half the route. And the cycle track they announced two years ago is still a painted line on a road that floods every monsoon.
So I take my bike. Like everyone else.
This is the part that genuinely baffles me about how we plan metros in this country. The actual train is the easy part. Lay the track, buy the coaches, open the station. Done. But we somehow never think about what happens after someone gets off. Or how they get there in the first place.
Bangalore metro ridership is still way below targets after almost a decade. Delhi Metro is better but still struggling outside the core city zones. Hyderabad Metro had decent early numbers then kind of plateaued. And the reason is almost always the same thing. The last mile is broken.
Pune is building a metro right now. I genuinely hope someone in that planning room is thinking about feeder buses before the inauguration happens. Because if the pattern holds they'll build the stations, cut the ribbon, and figure out connectivity maybe 4-5 years later after ridership disappoints.
The frustrating part is this isn't complicated to solve. Ahmedabad BRTS worked because they planned buses and metro together as one system. Mumbai local works because the station exits drop you into markets, bus stops, and auto stands. It didn't happen by accident.
We just keep treating the metro as the project and everything around it as someone else's problem.
Anyone actually using metro daily here? Curious how you're solving the last mile personally because clearly the city isn't.
Tara Devi Temple, Himachal Pradesh Before Vs After
I mean look at Mumbai over the years. So much construction all over. The foundation of these high rises goes so deep into the ground. There's concrete everywhere. Every time there's a new infrastructure project announced, trees and mangroves are sacrificed and there's no place to replant them within Mumbai due to scarcity of land. So it's natural that flooding will take place every monsoon as there's barely any land for the water to get absorbed. It's not impossible, but the government doesn't have the willingness to solve the problem. They know that monsoon comes once a year and goes by. People complain about it and move on. And then it's forgotten. So solving this issue is not top of their agenda. Their priorities are totally different.
Just look at how well planned and organised something like Manhattan looks -
And then look at Brookefield in Bengaluru -
Bengaluru and most of the indian cities for that matter look like complete mess, that they were made with no planning and complete randomness. The consequence ? You can feel it while driving/walking in these areas. You should be thanking your gods for every day you make it out alive and uninjured.
There's a stretch near my area. Got a brand new footpath sometime last year. Looked decent honestly. Wide enough, paved properly, little kerb stones and everything.
I walked on it exactly twice.
First time BESCOM dug it up for some cable work. Left it half open for like 3 weeks. Then filled it back but didn't level it properly so now there's this random hump in the middle. Then a chaat guy set up right at the corner. Then someone started parking their Activa on it every morning. Now there's a tempo that unloads vegetables on it between 7-9am daily and nobody says anything.
I just walk on the road now. Like everyone else.
The thing is this isn't a new problem or a surprise to anyone. Every city does this. Chennai, Lucknow, Pune, Hyderabad. Same story everywhere. Crores get spent, footpath looks nice in the inauguration photo, falls apart within a year.
And I think the actual reason nobody fixes it is that no single agency owns the footpath. PWD builds it. BESCOM digs it. BWSSB digs it again. Telecom guys come after that. Nobody has to fix what they break because there's no penalty and no one's tracking it. So the footpath just slowly gets destroyed by everyone and owned by no one.
BBMP spent something like ₹180 crore on footpaths between 2019-2023. I genuinely cannot tell where that went if I look at most roads in Bangalore.
Ahmedabad's BRTS corridor is the only place I've seen it work somewhat decently. Not perfect but at least the path stays a path. Probably because one agency controls that whole corridor end to end.
Anyway. Is this fixable or are we just going to keep relaying the same footpaths every few years and acting surprised?
All images are from the same road. Reposted with more images.
Spent the last 5 years watching property development across Bangalore and Hyderabad. The infrastructure gap is getting worse, not better.
Bangalore added like 2 million people between 2010-2020. Metro was supposed to handle it. Didn't. Roads were supposed to handle it. Didn't. You still sit 90 minutes in traffic to go 15km during peak hours. It's insane.
Now Hyderabad is on the exact same path. Growth numbers are actually higher. But the metro's still 5 years out. IT corridor expansion is ongoing. Same infrastructure squeeze we saw in Bangalore, just compressed into a tighter timeline.
I was looking at a project in Whitefield last month. The builder's been sitting on approvals for 18 months because Bangalore can't clear sewage lines fast enough. Meanwhile Hyderabad's approving new layouts before water supply is even planned.
This isn't about whether cities are "good" or "bad." It's that we build at Year 10 scale when we're at Year 3 of actual growth. Then spend a decade fixing it.
The only exception I've seen is Goa, because they basically capped density. Mumbai just went up instead of out.
What's it like where you are? Are your cities actually planning ahead or is it just reactive chaos like everywhere else?
Says in India, Art Deco is architecture of the common man (as compared to displays of power in America) vs. neo-Gothic/neo-Classical structures
Also says that the rise of gated communities, the lack of integration with Navi Mumbai is hurting Mumbai's growth. Explains why it's impossible for India to create it's own national architectural style
Thoughts?
