Mumbai’s Deadly Metro System

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Travelling on Mumbai’s trains is not for the claustrophobic, and getting up close (but hopefully not personal) with commuting strangers is impossible to avoid. More than seven million commuters a day cram onto Mumbai’s creaky suburban railway network. Crowding is extreme, with trains often carrying six times their capacity. During peak hours its estimated each suburban train carries 5000 commuters. Close to 3000 people die annually riding the Mumbai Metro, that’s eight people a day, according to rail officials. In 2018, 650 passengers died falling from trains alone, others were hit by poles whilst hanging through carriage doors, and even more were killed on the ground. Mumbaikars are always in a hurry to reach their destination, and there are those who won’t use a railway bridge, choosing instead to take their life in their hands, leap across the tracks, and not make it to the other side.

Mumbai’s long overdue metro has only been in existence for the past 5 years. The foundation stone was laid in 2006, construction work began in 2008, and a trail run was carried out in 2013. The system’s first line opened to the public in June 2014. All existing lines are above ground, but that’s in the process of changing. Every train has women only carriages and during peak hours ladies ‘special’ trains have been introduced, where the entire train is reserved for women only.

Now, one of the most challenging projects in the world is being attempted beneath the streets of densely packed Mumbai. More than 8,000 workers and a fleet of boring machines are working 24 hours a day, even through the monsoon season, to finish a 27 station, 34 klm metro line through some of the world’s most densely populated neighborhoods. It inches around the edge of one of Asia’s biggest slums, below an airport, under temples and colonial buildings, to end at a green strip of forest where leopards still roam.

Once completed, Mumbai will become the planet’s most crowded metropolis to build an underground subway. Although this metro line will help ease congestion on Mumbai’s streets, it will do nothing to alleviate the intense overcrowding plaguing trains running on all the other lines. This project is also cutting a path through the country’s religious traditions, legal system and every layer of its society, with challenges at every stop.

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