Mumbai Metro: Inside the first underground train of this overcrowded city
One
of the most challenging projects in the world is being attempted beneath one of
its most densely packed cities.
If
it works, Mumbai
will become the planet’s most crowded metropolis to build an underground subway.
More
than 8,000 workers and a fleet of 360-foot-long boring machines are working 24
hours a day—even through monsoon rains—to finish the 27-station, 21-mile subway
through some of the world’s most densely populated neighborhoods, around the
edge of one of Asia’s biggest slums, below an airport and under temples and
colonial buildings to end at a green edge of forest where leopards still roam.
The
train is also cutting a path through the country’s religious traditions, legal
system and every layer of its society, with challenges at each stop.
The
Mumbai
Metro Rail Corporation Ltd.—a joint venture between the state and
central government, which is building the subway—has had to negotiate with
thousands of families and businesses to get them to move and has fought
residents in courts over noise, land rights and even whether the subway will
sully sacred ground.
Comments
Post a Comment