"They will solve Delhi’s problem of congestion for good."

Bravo! Bravissimo!!! I love this golden sentence (says he gritting his teeth). Solutions, solutions. It's a wonderful world.

If you recall you heard from us last week concerning the wondrous “Straddling bus" project that so surprisingly popped in from an ambitious (?!?) entrepreneur in China -- but not about to be undone by the competition to the north, here you have some comments coming from India about two miraculous "zip over" projects in one Indian city, Mumbai, which offer some new wrinkles on our "let's build our way out of it" approach to sustainable transportation. That said, I might add that we thought this particular horse was actually already dead -- but apparently there is still some twitching there. We should really be finding the way to put it out of its (our actually) misery.

Promises, promises... (via "India lives in her cities too!")

Two news reports in Mumbai this week promise drivers of personal vehicles the opportunity to "zip over" congested roads. The first project is a proposed flyover over the western railway line. The current underbridge across the train track is too narrow and prone to getting flooded during rains. In all fairness, I don't think that is so bad an idea. Train tracks have a tendency to break all connectivity between the eastern and western portions of the locality, and it does help if a sufficient number of bridges exist.

The other project is a 17 km freeway from downtown Mumbai (Colaba) to the residential suburb of Chembur – a middle-class residential suburb. This project will involve building over salt pan lands, and MMRDA will also be building elevated roads over very old and congested neighbourhoods where relatively poor people live.

But what interests me is the use of the phrase “zip over” in both cases. . . . Read More

via India lives in her cities too!

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