Mumbai Coastal Road Project: 82 Per Cent Completed, Marine Drive-Worli Stretch To Be Operational By Next Month

Eighty-two per cent of the southern part of the Mumbai Coastal Road Project (MCRP) has been completed, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has informed.

The 10.58-km-long high-speed corridor will connect Nariman Point in South Mumbai with the Bandra-Worli Sea Link (BWSL) at Worli through a series of arterial roads, underground tunnels and traffic interchanges.

The project, is being constructed in four packages. According to BMC officials, in the first package between Priyadarshini Park and Baroda Palace, 83.82 per cent of the work has been completed; package-2 from Baroda palace to Bandra-Worli Sea Link is 69.46 per cent complete and the fourth package from Princess Street Flyover (Marine Drive) to Priyadarshini park is 90.77 per cent complete.

Once completed, the first phase of the coastal road being built at an estimated cost of Rs 12,500 crore will speed up the suburban commute to and from South Mumbai.

Earlier last week, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde announced that the initial segment of Mumbai's coastal road will become operational by the end of January 2024.

The high point of this project is the twin tunnels beneath the Arabian Sea near Girgaon Chowpatty, making it India's first undersea tunnel system. The 2.07-kilometre twin tunnel system runs from Priyadarshini Park to Chhoti Chowpatty at Marine Drive, close to the landmark Chowpatty beach at Girgaum.

The twin tunnels have been excavated using a Chinese Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM), Mavala, named after Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj’s Mountain warfare experts. The TBM Mavala, with a diameter of 12.19 metre, is the largest tunnel boring machine to ever be deployed in India and has been manufactured by China Railway Construction Heavy Industry Co. Ltd. (CRCHI).

Further, the BMC has received interest from six players for the Versova-Dahisar phase of the Mumbai Coastal Road project's north extension. The Civic body, in August 2023, had invited bids for all six packages — A,B,C,D, E and F — of the Rs 16,621 crore project. Of the Versova-Dahisar Coastal Road project's six packages, L&T has bid for A, B, E and F; APCO for A, C, D and F; J Kumar for A and B, Afcons for B, C, D and E, Megha for C and D, and NCC for E and F.