BKC-Chunabhatti flyover to be ready by July: Girders laid over CR lines

One of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in the city's eastern suburbs took a giant step late Saturday night as four 50 metre-long girders were laid over the Central Railway tracks between Sion and Kurla, as part of the Eastern Express Highway (EEH)-Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) Connector project.

MMRDA officials said that the original deadline of the work was April 2018 and that it has now been revised to June-July 2019. The project, conceived in 2014, aims to build a 1.6-km elevated road to give motorists direct connectivity from BKC to EEH and vice-versa.

The 50-m long girders were laid over Central Railway tracks late on Saturday night. Pics/Atul Kamble

The connector flyover takes off from G-Block of Bandra Kurla Complex and after crossing Mithi River, LBS Marg, Central Railway tracks and VN Mankikar Road leads to Chunabhatti railway station. It will further be extended to cross over the Harbour line railway tracks, to pass over Somaiya Trust Ground and join the Eastern Express Highway. The estimated cost of the project was Rs 156 crore, that was later revised to over Rs 200 crore.

Currently, motorists get stuck at the traffic near Sion Circle and on the Sion-Dharavi Link Road. On the Eastern Express highway, the elevated connector will cut travel time from 30 minutes to less than 10 minutes.

The work of laying girder over railway tracks has been tough since it requires stopping all trains on the route

While work on the bridge has been completed in patches, work on the Mithi River crossing is almost complete. The work on Central Railway was critical since it involved stopping trains across all the lines.

The elevated road will reduce travel time between EEH and BKC from 30 minutes to 10 minutes. Graphic/Ravi Jadhav

Eventually, the MMRDA is looking to connect the Chunabhatti arm to Wadala to connect the two hubs of Wadala and BKC. MMRDA's Joint Project Director (PR) Dilip Kawathkar told mid-day that a total of six girders were required to be placed. "Of these, we managed to put up four on Saturday night thus completing major work. The other two will be put up on Sunday night. Similar work of putting up girders on the Harbour line will be done soon too. We intend to complete the project by June 2019." All the girders for the connector have been assembled at the site.

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