Mumbai Coastal Road Project: First Phase Between Marine Drive And Worli To Be Operational By May 2024

The much-awaited Mumbai Coastal Road Project (MCRP) is expected to be completed by May 2024, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde said during the winter session of the state legislature on Monday (1 January).

While replying to the question asked by opposition legislators Anil Parab and Satyajeet Tambe in the legislative council, CM Shinde said that work is going on at full speed and the road will be opened by 31 May.

The 10.58-km-long high-speed corridor will connect Princess Street Flyover (Marine Drive) 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.

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-km 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 metres, is the largest tunnel-boring machine ever to be deployed in India and has been manufactured by China Railway Construction Heavy Industry Co. Ltd. (CRCHI).

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.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), which is executing the MCRP, has also selected four infrastructure firms to build the northward extension of the Coastal road which will connect Versova in the western suburbs with Dahisar at the northernmost tip of Mumbai.

It may be recalled that the civic body has divided the 22.93 km six-lane Versova-Dahisar Link Road (VDLR) into six packages — A, B, C, D, E, and F — and invited tenders for all the six packages together in August 2023. The Rs 16,621 crore project has a four-year construction deadline. 

According to the BMC, it has awarded the works for packages A and F to APCO Infratech, while J Kumar Infra projects in a joint venture with NCC Limited has been finalised for package B.

Similarly, Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Ltd (MEIL) has been finalised for packages C and D, whereas Larsen and Toubro (L&T) has been selected for package E.