The rainfall of 26 July 2005, which deluged Mumbai city and parts of Mumbai Metropolitan Region (mmr), was unprecedented. In the city of Mumbai, water logging has been more or less an annual feature, but not flooding of this kind. It caused floods, the depth of which even reached near first floor levels at many places and almost submerged buses on roads. Even normal heavy rains cause disruption to commuter traffic in Mumbai. When there is water logging in some low lying areas, rail tracks too get submerged. Then what could be the solution? Two systems could be thought of seriously. These two, together provide for transport capacities in excess of the need and what the mmmp would provide not before 2021. These are the High Capacity Bus System (hcbs) or Bus Rapid Transit System (brts) and the Skybus of Konkan Railway. The hcbs/brts works on motto "think rail, run buses". Segregated, sometimes with physical barriers, dedicated bus lanes and priority clearance to these buses and several small details can give a capacity, as achieved in Bogota, of as much as 45,000 pphpd per lane. During emergencies such as the 26 July, ban personal vehicles from plying on the arterial roads and leave them congestion-free. This would allow many buses to ply, taking part of the rail load. During normal periods, because these hcbs stops would be closer to commuters, many may still opt for it and thereby reduce the commuter super crush load significantly. Provide pumping facility on these arterial roads at their low-lying sections and ensure that no waterlogging takes place: Enclosed in concrete Skybus Metro of Konkan Railway has a design where the bogie runs on rails just as normal trains do but here the coach is suspended below the bogie unlike above as in the normal rail system. The bogie and track system is enclosed in a concrete box like structure with a slit in the bottom part to allow the suspenders to pass, the coach being located below the concrete box. The only time the Skybus is expected to stop plying will be during electricity failure. In such situation or otherwise also, the concrete box girder has a 9 m wide top deck, which can be used for walking. This facility is not available in, say, the elevated rails, as in mmmp or monorails. Besides, the cost is less than half that of an elevated railway and one-sixth to one-eighth of the underground metro. The capacity of Skybus Metro could be 18,000 pphpd to 54,000 pphpd. A 200 km of brts would cost about Rs2,000 crore and 80 km of skybus would cost Rs4,000 crore. These could be implemented within five years. In fact, the mmrda and best are working on the brts pilot routes on Western and Eastern Express Highway and jvlr, which is likely to be commenced in January 2006. As for the Skybus Metro, the technology has been at testing stage, having tested on a 1.6 km test track at Madgao, Goa. A 5 km long test track should suffice to fully test the system for safety and performance. Given the cost advantage and its utility during emergency situations, there should be no second thought given by the Government of Maharashtra and the Government of India in spending about Rs250 crore and get the system proven. This should not take more than one year, The first pilot project could be the stretch connecting the domestic and international air terminals. Basically, the brts should be adequate and cost-effective in all the other cities in the mmr, but providing Skybus has its usefulness as a disaster management alternative. However, an elevated walkway could be more economical. Special study will be required in these cities which border on the typical large size wards of mcgm. The situation of flooding can quite effectively be tackled by introducing the brts and Skybus Metro and this can be done within five years.