Mumbai has frequently been referred to as the economic powerhouse of India. It accounts for slightly more than 6% of India's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and contributes the highest GDP of USD$209 billion annually. With such tremendous economic growth, Mumbai also experiences a host of challenges that it struggles to overcome, especially in areas such as transportation. One of the main transport problems faced in Mumbai is traffic congestion. Mumbai has 5% of India's population but 14% of India's registered vehicles, meaning that traffic is growing four times faster than the population. .
The lack of city planning is the main cause of this problem of traffic congestion in Mumbai. Mumbai's infrastructure is unable to support the increasing capacity of cars. There has been a 100 fold increase in the population of motorized vehicles, however, the road network has only seen an 8 fold increase in terms of length during the same period. Thus Mumbai's roads are unable to hold the sheer number of cars present. In addition, there are also no proper footpaths in Mumbai, and most of them are used by roadside vendors, leaving people to walk on the roads, thus disrupting traffic movement. Apart from cars and public transport vehicles like buses, rickshaws and bullock carts also operate on Mumbai roads, which increasingly disrupts and restricts traffic movement leading to the prevalent problem of traffic congestion in Mumbai. Therefore, traffic congestion is a major transport problem in Mumbai. .
Despite all its glory as the financial capital of the country, Mumbai can also be dubbed the "accident capital" of the country. ( The Times of India, 2013 ) This third transport problem- poor road safety- has given birth to the problem of accident related death, which has been identified as a major cause of death in Mumbai. An analysis done by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) in 2012 revealed Mumbai to hold the record highest number of deaths by road accidents between the years 2007-2011.
