The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) has launched a first-of-its-kind ‘Weekly Public Transport Day’ in Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC), encouraging the district’s nearly two lakh daily commuters to leave their private vehicles at home and use public transport every Friday.

Weekly public transport day.. but in reality there is no public transport in BKC. Only auto mafia, private app buses. The public transport at BKC is still in the planning stage and given the status now, the public and transport are two different things for now.

Aqua Line 3 is fighting its own battles of visibility & connectivity. BEST bus frequency is very low. They have their own problems of lack of fleet and staff. The IR train station is away. An old plan to connect Kurla and Bandra suburban stations by a local rail line is dead.

From the one who takes public transport in BKC every single day, find this idea by MMRDA and the reputed WRI India a lot disconnected from reality on the ground.

To give just a few examples, the Yellow Line 2B passing BKC has been massively delayed, the BKC connector is out of bounds for autos and the BEST’s public transport options are limited. There is a 30-45 min gap between buses. Then there is a story of BEST’s tall double deckers.

It goes that BEST’s double decker buses in BKC from Bandra are unable to go to Kurla station as they are too tall to pass under SCLR. So what is being done, those buses originate from Kurla depot, which is basically the arterial LBS Road. Single decks ply, but frequency is limited. Read here: https://tinyurl.com/yc7umb4v

Leave public transport, the BKC has become a dangerous place at night time with no street lights to wait for buses at bus stops. The street light network has been dysfunctional due to the Metro and other work digging.

0n the plus side, BKC is slowly getting there. The skywalk is done, the neglected railway encroachments are gone, the bullet train station, Yellow Line 2B with integration with Aqua Line, the fancy six-seater pods are all coming, but all of it at an excruciatingly slow pace. And to end on a happy note, a bit of a positivity on the Aqua Line 3: https://tinyurl.com/4jpmvxk4