Transport design with Dhawal Ashar

Dhawal Ashar is a Manager in the Urban Transport and Road Safety team at the World Resources Institute India. His work integrates transport engineering and urban design to improve safety and sustainability in cities. Dhawal manages road safety projects in Mumbai, Bandung, Bangkok, to name a few. Today we are here to discuss design of last 2 decades of transport in Mumbai and some brilliant insights from Dhawal

Questions

1. We can't start from the wheel but can you give us a brief history of transportation in Mumbai? Also how are these transportation departments categorized? Local perception of commuters and as per government taxonomy?
2. What is a general practice for building and designing a road? What is challenging about Mumbai being a cluster of islands?
3. What was the situation of Mumbai roads despite having local railway 50 years ago and how is it today?
4. On which parameters are road safety and easy of transport measured? How are these conducted and how does Mumbai perform on those metrics?
5. What is the long term future of transport of Mumbai?