manoj

Every executive travelling on Mumbai roads will tell you this: Drive at your own risk here. Even owners of luxury cars, who rub shoulders with the Maruti 800s and Hyundai Santros every day in bumper-to-bumper traffic, lament about the never-ending traffic snarls and congestion.

After building close to 45 flyovers in the past 15 years, the city still remains gasping for that every bit of space as over 2,000 new cars add to the melee every month.

The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) is hoping to alleviate the congestion by building additional flyovers across the city. It is getting ready to issue work orders for eight new flyovers, which will be constructed under the Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project (MUIP) of the MMRDA. The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) will be the project executor.

The eight flyovers will supplement six other flyovers already under construction and one road-overbridge (RoB) at Dahisar on Main Link Road.

While some projects are suffering from delays, civic officials believe that the construction would be complete by February 2009. S Nandargikar, MMRDA chief engineer, says, “We are confident that work orders for these flyovers will be issued by February 2007.”

BD Lohar, MSRDC executive engineer, says that work on most flyovers would be finished within 18 months except for flyovers to be built from Bharatmata Junction to Ranibaug Junction and Lalbaug Junction on Dr Ambedkar Road. “These flyovers will be completed within 24 months after the work orders are issued,” he adds.

While five of the eight new flyovers will be along Dr Ambedkar Road, civic officials do not know what is to happen to the dedicated bus lane proposed on Dr Ambedkar Road by the Mumbai traffic wing of the All India Institute of Local Self Governance (AIILSG).

AK Jain, AIILSG director, had proposed a dedicated bus lane on the 5-km stretch from Sion to Dadar along the Ambedkar Road-Eastern Express Highway corridor to make travel faster for BEST buses along the route.

Nandargikar says, “Of the five lanes on the Eastern Express Highway, one lane could be transformed into a dedicated bus lane,” adding that the construction of the flyovers would not hamper the proposal of the bus lane.

The new flyover proposal also caters to the long-pending project of duplication of flyover at Sion Junction on Dr Ambedkar Road. MSRDC Executive Engineer MC Inasukutty says, “The project has been delayed because contractors have shown little interest in it. When we had invited bids, only two applied. We had to re-invite the bids. We are hoping that new bidders will complete the project expeditiously.”

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junaid

Govt. should also think about how to reduce the regularly increasing traffic on roads because flyovers don’t mean much until and unless vehicular traffic will not be controlled.