Mumbai: After plans for a ring route around Mumbai through the Eastern Freeway, coastal road, and a web of sea links, there’s now a proposal to develop a network of tunnels within the city to connect key locations and roads, in a bid to further decongest the city’s roads.
The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) has proposed to build a 70-kilometre network of tunnels in three phases, and is in the process of hiring a consultant to draw up a techno-economic feasibility report, and a detailed project report for the first phase.
An MMRDA official who did not wish to be named said, “The tunnels will help divert a significant amount of through traffic underground and reduce the surface-level congestion. The idea is to help ease bottlenecks across the city’s arterial routes.”
The MMRDA plans to take up the first phase for immediate implementation for which the consultant’s report will help finalise the alignment, cost estimates, construction methodology, the various clearances required and so on.
The first phase of approximately 16 kilometres is proposed to connect the end of the coastal road—which spans from Marine Drive to the Worli end of the Bandra-Worli Sea Link—to the Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) business hub and Terminal 2 of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport. This tunnel will also provide connectivity to the proposed Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train station at BKC.
This 70-km network of tunnels is separate from the intra-city tunnels that the MMRDA and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) are already building.
The tunnel network
In the second phase of the tunnel project, the MMRDA hopes to establish a vital east-west link by connecting Mumbai’s two major arterial roads—the Eastern Express Highway, which links suburbs on the eastern part of the city to central and south Mumbai, and the Western Express Highway, which links suburbs in the western part of the city. This is also proposed to have a link to the Mumbai airport. This phase will be about 10 kilometres long.
The third and the longest phase of the tunnel project will be a roughly 44-km north-south underground corridor spanning the entire vertical length of the city. With this, the MMRDA hopes to have smoother freight and passenger movement without disturbing the regular traffic above the ground.
Separately, the MMRDA is working on two other major tunnel projects in Mumbai.
The 9-km under-construction Orange Gate-Marine Drive tunnel will connect the existing Eastern Freeway and bring the traffic to the mouth of the coastal road at Marine Drive. Currently, the freeway terminates on P D’Mello Road, causing massive traffic snarls. The project is expected to be completed by 2028-29.
The MMRDA is also working on an ambitious Thane-Borivali twin tunnel of 11.85 kilometres that will go under the Sanjay Gandhi National Park. The tunnel, which will cut travel time between the two points from more than an hour to about 15-20 minutes, is currently under construction and expected to be completed by 2028.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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