Getting Mumbai To Move Again

Unlock 5.0

- Kiran D. Tare

The crowds at bus stops in Mumbai and its suburbs are growing bigger by the day. Packed buses come and leave, with few able to get in. Frustration is building up, but commuters have little choice. As Mumbai tries to unlock its economy, and more and more offices open up and industries try to get back to business, the stab at normalcy still requires the restoration of a vital missing link—suburban, or ‘local’, commuter trains, the city’s lifeline.

Since the Covid outbreak, local trains, which ferry an estimated 8 million commuters every day in normal times, have stopped running in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), except restricted operations for health and essential services workers, those in the pharma and food industries, and bankers and lawyers. An exception was also made for women commuters, for whom train services resumed on October 21 in two time slots—11 am to 3 pm and 7 pm to 12.40 am, the last train.