Mumbai: India’s Transforming MEGACITY

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWD_-Rzrn8o

Summary

First Paragraph:

Mumbai, India’s financial and entertainment capital, is undergoing a major transformation. With its contiguous urban population nearing 25 million and its land surrounded by water, Mumbai is the world’s second-most densely populated major city. To address the city’s congestion and support its growth into a global power center, five transportation megaprojects are under construction. These projects aim to ease the movement of people and goods, and position Mumbai for significant future development. Historically, Mumbai evolved from a group of islands merged through land reclamation projects by 1845, and its modern significance was largely shaped by the American Civil War, which boosted its cotton trade due to disruptions in the US supply and the opening of the Suez Canal. The British further enhanced Mumbai’s role by developing railways, facilitating goods movement to its rapidly growing port, which remains crucial for India’s container traffic today.

Second Paragraph:

Mumbai’s current infrastructure struggles to keep pace with its growing population. The city’s suburban railway, the lifeline of Mumbai, is severely overcrowded and dangerous, necessitating a more extensive and efficient transit system. The Mumbai Metro project, one of the most ambitious in history, aims to address this by constructing eight new metro lines to handle around 7-8 million passengers daily. The metro network will alleviate congestion, improve connectivity, and enhance safety. Alongside the metro, the Coastal Road project is set to cut travel time significantly by providing a 29.2-km expressway, and the Sewri-Worli Connector will enhance East-West connectivity. The Trans Harbour Link will be the longest sea bridge in India, reducing travel time between Mumbai and the mainland, and the new Navi Mumbai International Airport will separate international and domestic flights, boosting efficiency and capacity.

Third Paragraph:

Despite these advancements, there are concerns about environmental impact and sustainability. Elevated highways like the Coastal Road could disrupt coastal ecosystems and encourage more car ownership, worsening air pollution and traffic. Projects like the bridge to Gorai, an area currently accessed by ferry and relatively untouched by urban sprawl, raise fears of losing natural beauty and vital ecosystems like mangroves, which protect against flooding. Residents like Hillary, who prefer the quieter, more natural environment, worry about the loss of this tranquility and ecological balance. Mumbai’s development is a constant negotiation between progress and preservation, reflecting the broader challenges faced by rapidly growing megacities around the world.

視頻腳本總結

第一段：

印度的金融和娛樂之都孟買正在經歷重大轉型。孟買的連續城市人口接近2500萬，且其土地被水包圍，使其成為世界上人口密度第二高的大城市。為了解決城市擁堵問題并支持其成為全球權力中心的發展，孟買同時在建五個大型交通項目。這些項目旨在緩解人員和貨物的流動，并為孟買的未來發展奠定基礎。歷史上，孟買從一組島嶼通過填海項目在1845年合并為一塊大陸，其現代重要性主要因美國內戰而形成，當時美國的棉花供應中斷，蘇伊士運河的開通進一步促進了孟買的棉花貿易。英國人通過發展鐵路進一步提升了孟買的地位，促進了貨物向迅速增長的港口的運輸，孟買港今天仍是印度集裝箱運輸的核心。

第二段：

孟買現有的基礎設施難以跟上其不斷增長的人口。城市的郊區鐵路是孟買的生命線，但嚴重過載且危險，迫切需要更廣泛和高效的交通系統。孟買地鐵項目是歷史上最雄心勃勃的項目之一，旨在通過建設八條新地鐵線路，每天承載約700-800萬乘客。地鐵網絡將緩解擁堵、改善連通性并提高安全性。除了地鐵項目，濱海公路項目將提供一條29.2公里的快速路，大幅減少出行時間，而塞沃里-沃利連接線將增強東西向的交通連接。跨海大橋項目將成為印度最長的海上大橋，減少孟買與大陸之間的旅行時間，新的納維孟買國際機場將分開國際和國內航班，提高效率和容量。

第三段：

盡管這些進展顯著，但也存在環境影響和可持續性方面的擔憂。像濱海公路這樣的高架公路可能會破壞沿海生態系統，鼓勵更多的汽車擁有量，導致空氣污染和交通惡化。像通往戈萊的橋梁項目，戈萊是目前通過渡輪進入且相對未被城市擴展影響的區域，引發了人們對失去自然美景和重要生態系統（如保護免受洪水侵襲的紅樹林）的擔憂。像希拉里這樣的居民更喜歡安靜、自然的環境，擔心失去這種寧靜和生態平衡。孟買的發展是在進步與保護之間的不斷協商，反映了全球迅速增長的特大城市所面臨的更廣泛挑戰。

Vocabulary

ferry：美 [?feri] 渡船；擺渡；渡口；渡運

the local language:當地語言

landmass：美 [?l?nd?m?s] 大陸

Suez：美 [s?’?z] 蘇伊士(埃及東北部港市); 蘇伊士運河

canal：美 [k??n?l] 運河 注意發音

Suez Canal：蘇伊士運河

hinterland：美 [?h?n(t)?r?l?nd] 內地；腹地；

One of the things the British brought to us were the railways, mainly to move goods from the hinterland directly to the port. 英國人帶給我們的東西之一是鐵路，主要是把貨物從內陸直接運到港口。

seaport：海港；港口城市；海濱城市；

Today, Mumbai’s seaport handles most of the container traffic entering and exiting India, creating many jobs for its residents. 今天，孟買的海港處理著進出印度的大部分集裝箱運輸，為其居民創造了許多就業機會。

rupee：美 [ru?pi] 盧比

rickshaw：英 [?r?k???] 人力車；黃包車；人力三輪車

congestion：美 [k?n?d?est??n] 擁塞；阻塞；擁擠

traffic congestion：交通擁堵

It will also help ease traffic congestion.這也將有助于緩解交通擁堵。

southern end：南端

Bollywood：寶萊塢

lush：茂密的；豪華的；華麗舒適的；豐富的；

upscale：高檔的；豪華的；昂貴的；

Mumbai’s layout means its most popular areas are in its southern end, like Bollywood, India’s booming film and media industry. Many of its stars live in Bandra, a lush, upscale neighborhood. 孟買的布局意味著它最受歡迎的地區在它的南端，就像印度蓬勃發展的電影和媒體產業寶萊塢。它的許多明星住在班德拉，一個奢華的高檔社區。

expressway ：高速公路

waterfront：濱海區；濱湖區；濱河區

promenade：美 [?prɑm??ne?d] 散步道；步行街；（在海濱、公園等）散步；漫步；注意發音

waterfront promenade 海濱長廊

tear down：拆除

viaduct：美 [?va???d?kt] 高架橋；高架道路

viaduct highways：高架公路

Cautionary tales of such an approach can be found in the US cities of Seattle and Boston, which recently spent billions to open up access to their precious waterfronts by tearing down viaduct highways to reroute traffic through newly dug tunnels instead. 這種做法的警示故事可以在美國的西雅圖和波士頓找到，這兩個城市最近花費數十億美元，拆除高架公路，通過新挖的隧道來改變交通路線，以開放寶貴的濱水區。

flyover：公路立交橋；高架公路；

Transcript

Big things are happening in India’s
financial and entertainment capital.

Its contiguous urban population is nearing 25
million and its land is surrounded by water,

making it the world’s second-most densely
populated major city. But there’s hope that

a set of five transportation megaprojects -
that are under construction simultaneously

throughout the city - will ease
the movement of people and goods,

and help position it to become a global
power center by the middle of the century.

This is Mumbai, the transforming megacity.

Surrounded by the Arabian sea, Mumbai - which
means “mother” in Marathi, the local language - is

the heart of the state of Maharashtra, the
second-most populous country subdivision on Earth

and the single largest contributor to India’s
Economy. What was a group of islands were - by

1845 - merged into one landmass through multiple
land reclamation projects. But it was a turning

point in American history that did arguably
the most to place Mumbai on its modern path.

Had it not been for the Civil War in the United
States, Mumbai probably wouldn’t have been as important

a city as it is today. That source of raw
cotton for the newly industrialized England

suddenly dried up due to the Civil War.
Simultaneously they managed to open the Suez canal

which cut the journey to London into one-third. So
what was a 90-day journey became a 30-day journey.

When you come out of the Suez and you come out
of the Red Sea, the port dead ahead was Mumbai.

So Mumbai just happened to be at the right place
at the right time with the whole of Maharashtra’s

rich cotton growing culture. One of the things
the British brought to us were the railways,

mainly to move goods from the hinterland directly
to the port. And the port really grew like mad.

Today, Mumbai’s seaport handles most of the
container traffic entering and exiting India,

creating many jobs for its residents. Ramesh
Shinde commutes by train to work at the port.

Ramesh Shinde: “I work at a shipbuilding
company, Mazagon Dock, building submarines.

We have already built 5 submarines and
we’re currently building the sixth.”

The prospect of good, stable employment has been
attracting people from across India for decades.

In India we have a huge problem
with people migrating to the metros.

You can’t prevent people from
coming to the city of Mumbai,

they have as right to come here as any
other Indian. You either figure out how

to make things better, or you vote in people
who figure out how to make things better.

The challenge is that the city’s
population has grown far faster

than their government’s ability to build
infrastructure and it’s been happening

for so long now that no matter who they
elect, there is a lot of catching up to do.

Infrastructure was being built to try and keep up with the
needs of the city. But from the 1970s onwards we

had a lot of setbacks in spending money. We had
a complete lack of foresight. You know, when you

reach 10 million people and your infrastructure is
good for two, and you bring up your infrastructure

to 10 million people, by the time you do that it’s
already surpassed 15 million and it’s inadequate.

To close the gap, five massive transportation
builds are happening at the same time.

The first is the Mumbai metro,
one of the most ambitious and

important transit initiatives in history.

“Right now our suburban
railway is lifeline of Mumbai.

This suburban railway carries around nine million
passengers. The new metro network which we are

creating will be carrying around 7 million or 8
million passengers. We are almost doubling it.”

Gigantic tunnel boring machines are being
used to construct eight lines at the same

time through the living city. They can’t come
soon enough. The existing suburban railway is

completely maxed out, carrying three times
more passengers than originally intended.

Not only is this extremely
stressful, it’s dangerous.

Around 2,000 people die every year on these
tracks, conditions that cause constant delays.

“There is no fast train and it doesn’t come on
time. If the train on the central line doesn’t

come on time, then we miss the
connecting western line train.”

“It is difficult to get on
the train for a non-Mumbaikar.

It can get very crowded. I’m a local and
I can’t even get on the Virar train.”

The first two above-ground metro lines opened
earlier this year to positive reviews.

“With the metro, we sit in Air Conditioning
and travel for 30 rupees. So it is

very convenient. Otherwise, imagine how much
money one would spend on a taxi or a rickshaw.”

The most important, arterial line will run 33 km
under many of Mumbai’s most historic buildings.

“This is going to be the first underground
metro that the city is going to witness.

I live right outside what is going to be an
underground metro station soon. I think it’s

going to make travelling very convenient. And it’s
underground so there is very little damage to the

built heritage or built parts of the city.
The way the networks are being built right

now it’s made connectivity so much easier and
convenient. You get out of your railway station,

you have a skywalk that’s connecting you to
a metro line, and from there directly home.

I remember speaking to RA Rajeev. He said
that while the first metro project took

about 10 years they were really hoping
to make the rest of the lines quicker,

and we’re seeing that, we’re seeing that
happen in the rest of the city, the suburbs.

The current plan is for 14 lines
to make up a 360-kilometer network.

It will also help ease traffic congestion.

The road is very, very stressful. Clutch,
brake, clutch, brake. There is a lot of traffic.

Driving a car is very difficult. And what’s
more difficult than driving is parking.

That’s also a problem, no parking spaces.

Mumbai’s layout means its most popular areas
are in its southern end, like Bollywood, India’s

booming film and media industry. Many of its stars
live in Bandra, a lush, upscale neighborhood.

A little further south is the city’s
historic heart, home to government agencies,

the main business district and university,
luxury hotels, and famous landmarks–including

the Gateway of India, the Chhatrapati Shivaji
Terminus railway station, and the ensemble

of Victorian and Art Deco buildings that
face each other across Oval Maidan Park.

However, this area is so congested that it can

take well over an hour to
get to the airport by car.

That’s where project number two comes
in. The Coastal Road will be a 29.2-km

expressway that will cut this travel time to
just 20-25 minutes when it opens next year.

As a civil engineer it is a dream project.
It has everything a civil engineer can dream

of including reclamation, sea wall, bridges,
tunnel. We’ve had some world records on this

also. We’ve had 456 meters of mining
in a month, which has never happened.

The coastal road project was a dream in India

and now it is being built so there is a lot of
progress in India.

The project also creates 10.5km
of non-stop waterfront promenade

with various greenspaces and will improve the
ease of travel to Sanjay Gandhi National Park,

the world’s largest tropical urban forest.

However, the highway will also be a
massive concrete barrier that cuts

off much of the seafront, replacing
that view with loud vehicle traffic.

Cautionary tales of such an approach can be
found in the US cities of Seattle and Boston,

which recently spent billions to open up
access to their precious waterfronts by

tearing down viaduct highways to reroute
traffic through newly dug tunnels instead.

Other concerns include encouraging more car
ownership which could make air pollution and

traffic worse; that it neglects the needs
of carless residents who make up a majority

of the city’s population; and it seems to
ignore perhaps the city’s biggest threat.

When you build roads that are 1 km
into the sea, you need more roads

to connect that. You’re increasing your
built infrastructure. That increases cost,

that increases the damage that you are doing to
the environment. You’re reclaiming your seas for

this, at a time when there is a threat of the
city submerging. We need to seriously think

about whether a coastal road is really going to
benefit the city 50 years down the line. Are we

going to see more water logging incidents during
the rain? None of that has really been thought of.

Mumbaikars call elevated highways,
like the coastal road, flyovers.

Another is the Sewri-Worli Connector–the
third major project. It will cut through

the island so vehicles can cross the
city uninterrupted from coast to coast.

This taxi driver is constantly navigating its
construction. Based on conversations with his

customers, he has a good idea of how this
new piece of infrastructure will be used.

“When the bridge is built, the locals who have
to go into the suburbs, will go from below.

The rest of the people will
go up over the flyover.”

So we first had a whole
series of flyovers in Mumbai,

but they were all North-South. So
East-West connectivity was terrible.

Kurush lives in the satellite city of Navi
Mumbai, which will benefit from the fourth

project. The Trans Harbour Link is a 21.8
km bridge for vehicles to quickly cross

the bay-like inlet of the Arabian Sea that
separates the island city from the Indian

mainland. When it opens this year, it will
be the longest sea bridge in the country.

It’s not just a transportation corridor,

it is - and will be - and engine of economic
growth. So what this bridge does is, actually,

it brings the mainland within a distance of 12-15
minutes, adding a huge land parcel to Mumbai.

With the bridge in place, the
fifth project makes a lot of sense.

The Navi Mumbai International Airport will provide
what many other major global cities already have:

one airport dedicated to international
flights and a second for domestic travelers.

With an urban area nearly twice as dense as
the national capital, it is vital that Mumbai’s

transportation system works. So even though
these five big projects have taken decades,

now that the steel has been laid and the concrete
poured, an even more ambitious vision is emerging.

The city has transformed it’s been
moving toward becoming megapolis.

We’re looking at something all the way to the
Gujarat border in the north, to Mubar in the east,

and to Mangaon on the Bombay-Goa highway
in the south. That is what we realized the

city of Mumbai is going to be, and that’s
the Mumbai Metropolitan Region ultimately.

But an example of the constantly evolving
tradeoffs to continual development is Gorai,

a part of the city that has remained
fairly immune to its sprawl. Lying

just across Manori creek, it is only
accessible from the south by ferry.

In the evening the place is totally deserted.

You don’t feel like you’re in
Mumbai. This is a beautiful place.

Hillary has seen firsthand
how fast things are changing.

People are crazy for money, everybody wants a fast
life. Everybody sold their property. Before there

was not a single wall over here. Now since you
buy the property you construct your own wall.

Hillary says he’s content making about $8 USD a
day, even though he has to spend hours driving

15 km to the closest compressed natural gas pump
and wait in line each time he needs to fill up.

Authorities want to build a bridge to connect
Gorai - and its beaches - to the rest of the city.

They say this will give residents like
him more services, like gas pumps.

They’ll give you options. If
you need a gas pump over here,

we have to construct the bridge. To
win something we are losing something.

But if they construct the bridge and all the
beauty of this place is going to vanish. Oh

mangroves and everything–everything will be
disappeared over here. No land will be saved.

So even though his income could improve,
he doesn’t want the bridge. He thinks it

will ruin the relatively quiet life he and
his wife enjoy among the water-absorbing

mangrove ecosystem that helps protect them
from rising seas and storm flooding. Most

of the rest of Mumbai’s mangroves
have been completely destroyed.

Nobody else is destroying the nature, we ourselves
are destroying the nature. And we are blaming the

nature. What nature can do? Nature stands still.

Take care of the nature, everything will be
fine. If you play with the nature you have

to pay the fine. If you cooperate with
nature, nature will cooperate with you.

Afterword

2024年6月26日17點57分于上海。