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The Western Railway (WR) has identified and fixed new flooding spots along stretches of its Mumbai suburban rail network at Vasai, Dadar, Dharavi, and Matunga to Mumbai Central, where there had been instances of waterlogging in 2025. While at Vasai, the problem has been attributed to unplanned construction, at Matunga, the problem was due to blockages and delayed permissions to get the drains cleaned up.

When the monsoon lashed Mumbai in August 2025, it did not just inconvenience commuters — it exposed the fragile nature of two critical WR sections. At Vasai Road yard, water pooled across Diva lines, stabling lines and goods lines. Some 40 km to the south, in the Matunga-Mumbai Central section, the slow and fast lines too went under, resulting in disrupted operations.

Tackling issues

Western Railway is in the middle of a multi-agency campaign at Vasai to ensure neither stretch surrenders to rainfall again. Work involves micro-tunnelling, track ballast-lifting, boundary wall negotiations, getting the IIT Bombay to study the underlying problem and getting the required permissions to clear unchecked blockages.

Vasai hurdles

At Vasai Road, the root cause was revealed to be a sudden deluge compounded by high tide had overwhelmed a drainage ecosystem already throttled by unauthorised construction. Google Earth imagery tabled at the meeting showed how rapidly the surrounding landscape had changed, silting up the Anchole Nullah and severing the capacity of culverts to carry storm water away from the yard.

What is being done…

Rail authorities are raising the level of tracks above the flood line, augmenting WR’s own drainage. A micro-tunnelling operation is threading two 1200 mm diameter pipes beneath the yard to create new waterway capacity in the Anand Nagar area. New drains are being constructed along the fast alignments, and fourteen dewatering pumps — a last line of defence — are being installed by May 15. Also, municipal authorities will be held accountable for lapses.

Matunga-Mumbai Central issues

The Matunga-Mumbai Central flooding was traced to a blocked central drain and the silted-up Dadar-Dharavi Nullah, which had not been cleaned for three years. A joint inspection with the BMC on March 7, 2026, revealed that civic staff simply couldn’t get in — the entry point to the nullah sits inside the Matunga Railway Workshop compound, and no permission had been forthcoming for nearly three years.

What is being done…

The deadlock was broken, and permission granted to breach the boundary wall and conduct intensive cleaning. An letter in this regard was issued by the BMC to the workshop on March 12, 2026. With access secured, the central drain augmentation has been approved by the BMC and will now be completely rebuilt. Track lifting across five lines is also a difficult task, as platform raising remains a prerequisite before rail lines can be fully lifted.