MMR to get Climate Action Plan

When the Mumbai Climate Action Plan (MCAP) was released, experts said it is not enough to simply have a climate plan for Mumbai city and suburbs alone, because pollution and climate do not respect administrative boundaries.

Now, seven months later, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) is preparing a similar plan for the entire MMR. The aim is to assess the carrying capacity of the region which is poised for rapid development with mega projects such as the MTHL, the international airport, various Metro lines, the Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway, the Bullet Train, etc on the anvil.

The MMRDA will be working with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to draft the MMR Climate Action Plan. The authority will then incorporate the study’s findings while planning various development projects as the growth has to sustainable. In a way, the MMR-CAP will be the sustainable planning document to guide the expansion of the MMR. 

Unlike the MCAP, which estimated the total carbon footprint of activities in two districts (Mumbai city and suburbs) measuring around 480 sq km, the MMR-CAP will measure the total ecological burden from various activities across an area of 6,328 sq km, consisting of eight other municipal corporations including Thane, Kalyan-Dombivali, Navi Mumbai, Ulhasnagar, Bhiwandi- Nizampur, Vasai-Virar, Mira-Bhayandar and Panvel, in addition to several municipal councils and over 1,000 villages in Thane, Raigad and Palghar.

The MMR-CAP will not have a ‘net zero’ target on the lines of the MCAP, which ambitiously aims to make Mumbai a carbon neutral city by 2050, twenty years ahead of India’s nationally determined target. 

The MCAP marked the first-ever stock-taking of Mumbai’s emissions by a government body and estimated the city’s total emissions in 2019 to be 34.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2Eq) greenhouse gases. A staggering 71% of this load can be attributed to the energy sector, followed by transportation which contributed 24%. The remaining 5% was attributed to the waste sector.

However, as the MCAP itself reveals, a truly net zero carbon balance for the city is virtually impossible within this time frame.

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Rejuvenating Mumbai’s rivers

A long-pending recommendation of the Chitale committee which probed the Mumbai deluge of July 26, 2005 -- rejuvenation of the Dahisar and Poisar rivers – will finally be carried out by the BMC.

This includes widening and dredging the rivers, removal and rehabilitation of 200 slums on their banks and construction of `nullah’ interceptors to stop industrial effluents, sewage and untreated waste from entering the rivers. The project will collectively cost Rs 1,438 crore and take three years. 

The two rivers which originate from Tulsi Lake in the Sanjay Gandhi National Park are no better than sewers today. Incidentally, the Chitale committee had remarked that the BMC, in its development plan, had deliberately referred to these rivers as “nullahs” to keep them out of the purview of river laws.

This river rejuvenation project is also a part of the BMC’s Brihanmumbai Storm Water Disposal (Brimstowad) project, launched in 2005 to prevent floods. Under this project, the civic body had planned to augment drainage, construct new drains and widen and desilt nullahs to increase their capacity.

The sewerage treatment plant (STP) installed for the Poisar river at 10 locations will have the capacity to treat 33.50 MLD of sewerage on a daily basis. The Dahisar river STP, set up at two locations, will have a capacity to treat 6.5 MLD.

The project also envisages a 3,153-metre-long service road along the banks of Poisar river and a 1,165-metre-long service road along the Dahisar river as well as roadside drains.

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Mission to eradicate TB by 2025

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation is on a mission to eradicate tuberculosis (TB) completely by 2025 under the Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Yojana. According to the BMC’s recently clocked in figures, there are 40,000 TB patients undergoing treatment in Mumbai.

If BMC manages to accomplish this in time, this will still be five years earlier than the United Nation’s 2030 target.

According to The India TB Report 2022, the country experienced a 19% increase in tuberculosis cases in 2021 compared to the previous year. This is because the pandemic disrupted their treatment. 

The BMC has urged citizens to contribute to the fight against TB by adopting patients under the Nikshay Mitra scheme and taking care of their nutritional and medical requirements. 

Nikshay Mitras provide dry ration kits to patients for six months to three years. The kit costing Rs 500-900 a month comprises items like oil, cereal, pulses and jiggery as nutrition plays a huge role in combating the disease at an early stage.

Anyone can register on a digital portal that the government has developed through a public-private partnership. The goal is to reduce stigma around TB diseases, which can only be accomplished with community support, better care, and adoption of TB patients. So far, there are 7,000 Nikshay Mitras in Mumbai.

According to Dr Mangala Gomare, BMC’s executive health officer, 31,000 out of 40,000 patients have consented to get support from donors. 

Nikshay Mitras can also finance diagnostic to help in diagnosis of TB, blood investigations, MRI, CT scan and other investigations.

These donors can also provide vocational help by in the way jobs or even help family members of patients from lower income groups. It is not just the patient, the entire family fights TB. Treatment goes on for one to two years and the whole family goes through hurdles. This is where Nikshay Mitras come in.

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Global firms bid for Dharavi redevelopment

The plan to transform India’s largest slum into a plush township has got off to a fresh start with the Shinde-Fadnavis government calling a global tender for the redevelopment project on October 1. With a population close to a million, Dharavi, which is bang in the middle of the city, is equivalent to a municipal corporation of class one size. Besides, it has thousands of tanning factories and informal recycling industries.

Although the last date for the submission of bids is October 31, eight companies, including some from the Middle East, and South Korea, have participated in the Dharavi Redevelopment pre-bid meeting tendering process.

The project was first proposed by the BJP-Shiv Sena coalition government led by Devendra Fadnavis and two companies – Adani Group and Dubai’s Sec-Link Group – had shown interest in it. The redevelopment of the 259 hectares is pegged at Rs 20,000 crore.

The state government has come out with a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) model for the project. This, experts says, gives a lot of credibility and a lot of risk mitigation to the project and at the same time it gives freedom and flexibility in the execution. The majority stakeholder will be from the private sector for that the government will give them open competitive bidding based on a pricing mechanism in the market.

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MMR to get Climate Action Plan

When the Mumbai Climate Action Plan (MCAP) was released, experts said it is not enough to simply have a climate plan for Mumbai city and suburbs alone, because pollution and climate do not respect administrative boundaries.

Now, seven months later, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) is preparing a similar plan for the entire MMR. The aim is to assess the carrying capacity of the region which is poised for rapid development with mega projects such as the MTHL, the international airport, various Metro lines, the Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway, the Bullet Train, etc on the anvil.

The MMRDA will be working with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to draft the MMR Climate Action Plan. The authority will then incorporate the study’s findings while planning various development projects as the growth has to sustainable. In a way, the MMR-CAP will be the sustainable planning document to guide the expansion of the MMR. 

Unlike the MCAP, which estimated the total carbon footprint of activities in two districts (Mumbai city and suburbs) measuring around 480 sq km, the MMR-CAP will measure the total ecological burden from various activities across an area of 6,328 sq km, consisting of eight other municipal corporations including Thane, Kalyan-Dombivali, Navi Mumbai, Ulhasnagar, Bhiwandi- Nizampur, Vasai-Virar, Mira-Bhayandar and Panvel, in addition to several municipal councils and over 1,000 villages in Thane, Raigad and Palghar.

The MMR-CAP will not have a ‘net zero’ target on the lines of the MCAP, which ambitiously aims to make Mumbai a carbon neutral city by 2050, twenty years ahead of India’s nationally determined target. 

The MCAP marked the first-ever stock-taking of Mumbai’s emissions by a government body and estimated the city’s total emissions in 2019 to be 34.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2Eq) greenhouse gases. A staggering 71% of this load can be attributed to the energy sector, followed by transportation which contributed 24%. The remaining 5% was attributed to the waste sector.

However, as the MCAP itself reveals, a truly net zero carbon balance for the city is virtually impossible within this time frame.

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BMC launches on-street parking scheme

Parking is a vexed issue in any city – even in a planned city like Navi Mumbai -- given the lack of parking lots and a parking policy. 

Now, the BMC’s on-street pay-and-park scheme, an experiment in private parking slots on public roads, has been launched on two roads in South Mumbai. 

The roads have been ‘adopted’ by two housing societies -- Bakhtavar CHS on Narayan Dabholkar Lane for 10 parking slots and Sagar Kunj on Rungta Lane at Nepean Sea Road for six slots -- for a period of six months. 

The societies pay BMC Rs 6,600 per vehicle per month, which amounts to Rs 40,000 per month from the Rungta Lane parking slots and Rs 66,000 from Narayan Dabholkar Marg.

This experiment is part of the BMC’s Comprehensive Parking Management Plan (CPMP) to regulate street parking in three administrative wards — D (Grant Road, Peddar Road), K-West (Andheri, Juhu) and S (Powai, Bhandup).

Under CPMP, citizens who don’t have parking space inside their housing societies will be allowed to park on internal roads, and on the streets outside their societies, for a parking fee, provided it does not obstruct traffic.

The two South Mumbai societies submitted their applications three months ago to the BMC. A survey was conducted with the local traffic police and an NOC obtained from the latter. 

Other new concepts in CPMP include valet parking, pick-up and drop-off facilities, no-parking lanes, street parking zones, and a city parking pool, which will be an online aggregator platform that will have details of all parking spaces available within a ward. The parking plan aims to identify and optimise all available parking spaces in the ward.

The Mumbai Parking Authority (MPA) under the BMC, had held meetings in March with representatives of residential societies and citizens’ groups to discuss the plan and understand their parking space requirements.

The idea is to keep arterial roads as no-parking zones as traffic snarls are usually caused by unregulated and haphazard parking. 

The BMC has reached out to citizens living in housing societies in areas such as Malabar Hill, Peddar Road, Lower Parel, Worli, Andheri West, Juhu, and Powai, and urged them to fill out forms outlining their parking requirements. While Wards S and D appeared keen to begin the residential parking scheme, the response from Andheri West and Juhu has been tepid. Officials say the behavioural change aspect of the plan will take time. 

The BMC is also in talks with the traffic police regarding the appointment of parking wardens who will regulate parking within a ward. 

In a month-long survey last year, the MPA had collected and analysed available parking spaces, parking requirements for each type of vehicle, duration, pick-up/drop-off facility and loading/unloading facility, and strategically assigned spaces available for these functions.

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BEST plan to reduce pvt cars

With a view to rid Mumbai’s roads of private cars, the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply Transport (BEST) is set to launch a premium bus service by mid-October. These buses will target corporate offices at BKC, Nariman Point, Cuffe Parade, Lower Parel, Malad, among other places.

A bus carries anywhere between 50 and 90 passengers. If these many self-driven car users shift to BEST buses, the roads will be less cluttered. Besides, electric buses reduce air pollution and the carbon footprint.

The launch of the premium service was slated for Navratri but was postponed due to a delay in getting certification from Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) which is mandatory as these are electric buses.

The premium bus service will run with 100 buses in the fleet till December. Over the next year, the number is expected to go up ten-fold.

The service will make it possible for commuters to book their seats and travel in air-conditioned comfort without bothering about the traffic. It will be of great respite as it will run in peak hours with limited halts. The fares are expected to be cheaper than shared auto-rickshaws and taxis, with the facility of a monthly pass.

The seats can be booked through the Chalo app and no standees will be allowed. Commuters can relax and even charge their laptops and mobile phones while travelling. The app will help them track the bus, give information on the occupancy and also allow commuters to purchase seats in real-time before the bus arrives at the stop.

Equipped with ergonomically-designed seats for extra comfort on long journeys, with headrest wings and adjustable footrests, all buses will have a dedicated USB power port for every passenger. 

This is yet another feather in the cap of Maharashtra which has half the country’s e-vehicles.

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