Mumbai Coastal Road Project: Work on underwater tunnels to start in January

Construction work for Coastal Road underway at Napean Sea Road on December 7. Pic/Sayyed Sameer Abedi

The boring work for the twin tunnels of the Coastal Road project will begin on January 7, said the BMC. The twin tunnels of 2.07 km each will pass under Malabar Hill.

"The tunnels will be bored with the help of a tunnel boring machine (TBM). The work to install TBM measuring 400 metres in length and 39.6 feet in diameter has been completed and the excavation work of the first tunnel would start on January 7," said BMC Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal.

The machine can excavate around 6 to 8 metres of the tunnel each day and it would take about nine months to complete one tunnel, after which the work on another tunnel can start. The Coastal Road tunnels are 10-70 metres under the surface and one of the deepest in the country, and the largest to be made by a TBM.

Chahal said, "Substantial work of the road has been done in the past couple of months. As much as 175 acres of land under the Arabian Sea has been reclaimed and the work on reclaiming another 102 acres of land under the sea is going on. The TBM will start the work on the reclaimed land." The tunnels are expected to be completed by July 2022.

So far, 17 per cent of the work has been completed, as against the 30 per cent expected till November 2020. A total of R1,281 crore has been spent. The total budget of the 10.5-km-log Coastal Road is Rs 12,721 crore.

As per the last deadline, the Coastal Road was supposed to get ready by December 2022, but the completion goal has been extended to July 2023. The work was delayed by nine months because of a court battle over environmental issues.