Mumbai: For the past 10 years, almost every part of Mumbai, including its sea, has been seeing frenzied construction activities with several infrastructure projects being implemented at the same time.
In 2024, the city finally started seeing some delivery as showpiece works such as the Atal Setu, the country’s longest sea bridge, in the east, and the coastal freeway on the west decongesting parts of Mumbai. That streak is likely to continue in 2025 with a few more projects nearing their completion date.
These include the much-delayed Navi Mumbai international airport, the Nagpur-Mumbai Samruddhi expressway, the second phase of the Colaba-Bandra-Seepz Metro, the expanded Thane creek bridge that connects Mumbai and Navi Mumbai and a missing link on the Mumbai-Pune expressway. Most of these projects, except the Samruddhi expressway, were originally conceived more than 10 years ago, and were delayed for some reason or the other.
Navi Mumbai international airport
The inordinately delayed Navi Mumbai airport, which was conceived in 1997, will be inaugurated in April 2025 and opened for commercial operations in May, Adani Airport Holdings Ltd CEO Arun Bansal told reporters after a trial landing of a commercial aircraft at the airport Sunday.
Earlier in December, the Airports Authority of India validated the Precision Approach Path Indicator system, essential for guiding pilots during landing, and in October, the Indian Air Force’s C295 successfully conducted a trial landing at the Navi Mumbai Airport.
In the first phase, the airport, the second in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region after the Mumbai airport at Sahar, will have a single operational runway and a terminal building (T1) with a capacity of 2 crore passengers each year. Once the entire airport is complete, it will have a set of two parallel runways of 3,700 metres and taxiways spaced 1,550 metres apart.
The Navi Mumbai airport has taken a long time to take off with delays in site selection and securing environment clearance. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had laid the foundation stone of the Navi Mumbai airport in 2018. The airport required certain pre-development works to be undertaken, including cutting a hill and diverting two rivers—Ulwe and Gadhi.
The actual construction started in 2021.
Mumbai’s first underground Metro
In 2024, Mumbai got a portion of its first underground Metro corridor when the first phase of the Colaba-Bandra-Seepz Metro, popularly known as Metro 3, started operations in October. This was a 12.69 km stretch from Bandra Kurla Complex till the very end of the line, the car depot at Aarey Colony.
In 2025, the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation (MMRC), a joint venture set up between the Centre and the state government, plans to operationalise the line till Acharya Atre Chowk in Worli by March, and eventually, the entire line of 33.5 km till Cuffe Parade by.
An MMRC official, who wished to not be named, said that most of the work is done and just the finishing touches remain—like work on some stations and systems testing formalities.
The entire Colaba-Bandra-Seepz corridor, work on which began in 2016, has faced several controversies and delays, the most prominent one involving the location of the car depot. The proposal for a car depot at Aarey—considered Mumbai’s ‘green lung’—stirred protests by a section of citizens in 2019. The issue also became a political hot potato between the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), which was opposed to the Aarey location, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which was in favour of it.
Nagpur-Mumbai expressway
The final stretch of this 701-km expressway, popularly known as Samruddhi Mahamarg, which will bring it to the mouth of Mumbai, is likely to be opened for operations in the first quarter of 2025.
This last stretch is a 76-km part from Igatpuri in Nashik to Amane in the Thane district.
Once fully complete, the Samruddhi expressway will enable commuters to travel from Mumbai to Nagpur in about 8 hours. Without the expressway, road travel from Mumbai to Nagpur used to take about 16 hours.
The first phase of 520 km from Nagpur to Shirdi was completed in December 2022, after which the former Eknath Shinde-led Mahayuti government opened small stretches as and when ready over the next 2 years.
The Samruddhi expressway was the brainchild of Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Devendra Fadnavis during his first stint as CM. Work on the project had started in 2019.
Mumbai Pune expressway missing link
This project was taken up by the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) to reduce traffic congestion on the busy Mumbai-Pune expressway.
This ‘missing link’ on the expressway is likely to be fully ready in 2025, though MSRDC officials are refraining from putting a hard deadline to it. Work on a critical viaduct is still underway, an MSRDC official said.
The Mumbai-Pune expressway was built about two decades ago, and the road is nearly saturated with long traffic jams, a frequent occurrence on it. The missing link project was proposed to reduce the traffic and travel time at the Lonavala ghat section, where traffic considerably slows down. The project involves the construction of two tunnels and two bridges.
The completion of the missing link will reduce travel time on the Mumbai-Pune expressway by at least half an hour.
Thane creek bridge
The set of bridges along the Thane creek were the main connectors between Mumbai and Navi Mumbai till the Atal Setu from Sewri in the island city and Nhava Sheva on the mainland was commissioned. Atal Setu is, however, a tolled road while the bridges across Thane creek are not.
In 2025, a new southbound bridge along the Thane creek will be opened to traffic, likely in the first quarter.
In October last year, the MSRDC opened a new northbound bridge over the Thane creek.
The first bridge, a two-lane, across the Thane creek was constructed in 1973, and has been closed for traffic since more than two decades due to questions over its structural stability.
The second bridge, which has been the mainstay for traffic between Mumbai and Navi Mumbai until now, was built in 1997. While it has six lanes, it faces heavy traffic congestion as cars from the 10-lane Sion-Panvel highway merge into the six lanes of this bridge.
The plan to build an extra set of bridges over the Thane creek for northbound and southbound traffic was first proposed in 2012. The actual work, however, started only in 2020. The new twin bridges flank the second Thane creek bridge.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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