Monsoon Traffic Hell

By | 11:52 4 comments

I just wish I could have taken a picture of the traffic hell I went through last night !!

It started raining (monsoon season here in India) early evening yesterday and by the time I left work there were huge puddles outside and I was drenched before I even got into my car !

The distance from work to home is a maximum of 13 kms … guess what … it took me 2.5 hours to travel that distance yesterday !!! 2.5 hours is not a joke !!! My mate MG and I were in the car – and we literally sat back and put on ‘Gone in 60 Mumbai TrafficSeconds’ on the laptop and watched most of the movie !!!

I live in South Mumbai and that’s the kind of traffic I faced going back home … I was feeling even worse for the people leaving town and heading towards the suburbs because there was a stretch of road for about 6 kms that was just chock-a-blocked with stand-still traffic !!! And MG wanted me to turn around to drop him home !!! yeaaaaaaaaaah right !!

And this is just the beginning !! This isn’t even close to the prediction for later this year ! Apparently this year the rains are going to be worse than the floods of 26th July 2005the forecast for this year is the highest tides (5.05 meters) that India would have seen in 100 years !   Mumbai's municipal council has admitted that it isn't equipped to handle more than 25 millimeters of rain per hour, coupled with a high tide of more than 4.5 meters (in 2005 it was 4.48 meters)

monsoon carFor those of you that don’t know it, the floods were caused by the eighth heaviest ever recorded 24-hour rainfall figure of 994 mm (39.1 inches) which lashed the metropolis, and intermittently continued for the next day. 644 mm (25.4 inches) was received within the 12-hr period between 8am and 8pm.  Torrential rainfall continued for the next week. (courtesy Wikipedia). 

I wasn’t in the city when this happened – but know of a lot of people who suffered due to the floods !   From the above picture – you can see how the cars were being flooded !

So … as the monsoon continues to pour in Mumbai; people will continue to battle traffic snarls and wade through waterlogged roads and huge potholes !!! And I’m going to drive myself crazy :(

4 comments:

Sumit said...

What an irony, to be stuck in a jam and watching 'Gone in 60 seconds'. :P

I have only read about the Mumbai floods, and they sound scary! You take care, and have fun.

Anonymous said...

Me too have read about Mumbai floods but same old question repeats itself is what happened to the promises that were made then of solving this issue?
4 years passed since that monsoon Still every year Mumbai faces flooding ...
Only thing you can do is pray to Varun dev(Rain God) to spare this year and hope he listens ....

Dazediva said...

Sumit - yup ironic enough that we thought by watching fast car chases we could ignore the kilometers of traffic jam !!

Dmanji - the government really hasn't done much to prevent any sort of flooding .. they've got the new sea link in place as well, lets hope they have a drainage system for it otherwise we're in trouble !!!

ani_aset said...

lets get ready with our boats and food supplies..the government has had its 4 years to just be prepared..its bad