I travelled over the 5.6 km Bandra Worli Sea Link (Mumbai) last night amidst heavy rain and poor visiblity.
It is a great achievement and a beautiful land mark for Mumbai.It (or rather half of it) was inaugurated by Sonia Gandhi on the 30^th June.

Amidst the euphoria over this engineering marvel, was controversy regarding its being named after Rajiv Gandhi.
In the first place, I wonder why it had to be named at all. To avoid any useless controversy, we could have mimicked  the beautiful Sydney Harbour Bridge in Sydney, Australia  and left its name at Bandra Worli Sea Link.The government promised that the Bandra Worli Sea Link would bring down the commuting time from Bandra to Love Grove Junction at Worli from 35 minutes to seven minutes. But this has proved a false dream.
The speed limit on the sea link has already been reduced from the original 80 kmph to 50 kmph.
There are bottle necks at the entry and exit points and numerous curves and traffic signals which reduce the speed, induce traffic jams and prolong the time.
The one way toll of Rs 50 for a ten minute or so or saving would hardly encourage many car owners.

The bottle necks at the entry and exit points should have been anticipated and taken care of when the link was under construction. This indicates poor planning at the highest levels.

Coming to the logistics, there are big advertisements showing the amount of steel, cement, etc. used.
We all know that these have to be necessarily used in any construction.
The quantities involved hardly make any sense to the lay man.

The bridge has taken eight years to build, just double the scheduled time and some of the construction is still incomplete.
By way of comparison, China constructed the 36 km Hangzhou Bay Bridge, the world’s longest sea-crossing bridge, (over seven times the length of the Worli Bandra Link) in just four years.
China built seven sea links in the past six years against our solo venture in eight years. 

Should we pat ourselves? I am not so sure.