Goodbye 2014, the year we got so close

“We started meeting more often because of the Metro line. It took me lesser time to travel from Ghatkopar to JB Nagar, Andheri, than from Ghatkopar to Dadar,” Arvind says. Six months after the Metro rolled out, Pooja and Arvind were married.

The process of linking the city’s far-flung places began in 2013, but 2014 was the year of new, shorter, smarter commutes. New links, roads and public transportation systems, though only a fraction of what what mega Mumbai needs, came up and brought the city’s corners and its people a little closer.

In fact, the Monorail, Metro rail, the Santacruz Chembur Link Road and the Eastern Freeway more or less shifted the city’s centre to the eastern suburbs of Chembur and Ghatkopar. Already amid a realty boom, improved connectivity to these suburbs has led to zooming real estate prices in Chembur and Ghatkopar, up by about 25 to 30 per cent over the last two years.

Those who had ventured to invest in property in these areas, once the “uncool” cousins of western suburbs, have the broadest smiles in Mumbai now.

About eight years ago, dentist couple Dr Madan and Anagha Deshpande sold their small family home in Sion and moved to a bungalow in Govandi with their little son Adit and a Golden Retriever. Seven years later, an engineering marvel, the Eastern Freeway, literally came to their doorstep at the base of the Panjarpol hill.

“Our clinic is in Chembur, so we don’t use the Freeway for our daily commute. But our family outings have drastically increased because of it. Now, we often go out for drives to the Gateway of India and for ice-cream at Colaba after dinner. We’re eating out more often, mostly in south Mumbai. And of course, my shopping trips to Crawford Market are also up,” Anagha says.

Similarly, 20-year-old Aakash Dhote, a Dadar resident, who loves spending time at the wheel, has added more destinations to his list where he goes with his girlfriend. “I love driving. Earlier, my post-dinner drives with my girlfriend were limited from Dadar to Worli sea-face or at the most to the Bandra-Worli sea link. Now, we love going to the new airport terminal in Andheri all the way from Dadar just for a drive. The new flyovers on the Western Express Highway and the elevated road leading up to T2 make for a very pleasant drive,” says Dhote, a third-year student of mass media.

The Metro has also made some far suburbs along the western line suddenly popular among tourists — Versova beach, Gilbert Hill and Mahakali Caves, to cite a few.

The Versova Metro station is about a kilometre from Versova beach. The 200-feet monolithic column of black basalt rock formed in the Mesozonic era about 66 million years ago, popularly known as the Gilbert Hill, is accessible from the Andheri metro station. Similarly, the Western Express Highway Metro station is about 3 km from the 19 rock-cut monuments at Mahakali Caves.

According to figures from Mumbai Metro One Pvt Ltd, which runs the Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar Metro, Versova gets a daily footfall of 30,000 passengers as a monthly average. It is lower than suburban railway stations like Andheri and Ghatkopar, but is still quite significant for a second-tier station.