Arecent sojourn in Mumbai provided an enlightening experience in civic innovation and management. The brief Mumbai excursion offered an up close and personal demo of the can-do problems-solving capabilities of the metro’s intelligentsia and state and local governments. In 2009 construction of a four lane 2.4 km sea bridge — the Bandra-Worli Sea link — was completed to link the suburb of Bandra and mid-town Worli, shaving over 40 minutes commuting time for motorists journeying from the spanking new Manhattan-style Bandra-Kurla business hub to South Bombay (aka SoBo).

Last week, your correspondent’s usual 45-60 minutes ride between Mumbai Airport and SoBo’s Peddar Road was reduced to 30 minutes as I sped along a newly constructed 14 km  coastal highway featuring perhaps the country’s first double-decker flyover linking upscale, mid-town Worli to Marine Lines in SoBo. Moreover a recent origin metro rail network orchestrated by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) has established four rail lines, including the newly inaugurated (October) Aqua underground railway which links north and south Mumbai.

In sharp contrast, Bengaluru’s road network has expanded by a mere 6,000 km over the past decade with several flyover construction projects stalled for years, even as 2,774 vehicles are being registered every day to add to the 2.5 million cars and 8.2 million two-wheelers plying the garden city’s notoriously potholed roads. Meanwhile, 14 years after work on the construction of  Bengaluru’s Namma Metro project commenced, ridership of the metro rail network is only 1 million passengers daily.

Little wonder the average speed of automobiles in Bangalore is 10 km per hour, the lowest worldwide as beleaguered state and local authorities vainly attempt to please every NIMBY (not in my backyard) group of the Garden City hurtling towards gridlock. Clearly the state and municipal governments aren’t yet aware that to make omelets, breaking eggs is a necessary precondition.