Mumbai coastal road project: BMC completes 1 km boring

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) completed a 1 km long tunnel for the coastal road project on Sunday. According to the officials, the coastal road department told the media that the tunnel work for the south traffic would be completed by January next year. As a part of the 10.58 km coastal road project beginning from Princess Street Flyover to Worli, the civic body is constructing a 2.07 km long twin tunnel from Priyadarshini Park to Girgaon Chowpatty under the Malabar Hill and the Arabian Sea. On 11 January 2021, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray started India's biggest Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM). BMC aims to complete the tunnel projects within 20 months, but the Covid-19 pandemic affected the work. The chief engineer of the coastal road department, Vijay Nighote, said that the southbound tunnel would be completed by January because 1 km of work is left. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the work was delayed for two to three months this year. The TBM project will make a finding at Girgaon Chowpatty, and it will be brought back to Priyadarshini Park for another tunnel work for northbound traffic. BMC has so far completed 40% of the work worth Rs 12,721 crore. Around 90% of the reclamation work for the sea was completed, and 9 hectares is remaining out of the 111 hectares. The remaining work will take a few months to complete. It will be done at Haji Ali and Worli later. BMC will also begin the survey for compensation of the fishermen who are affected by the reclamation work. The officials have failed to get a response from the contractors for the fishermen survey, seeking help from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). Image Source Also read: Underwater tunnel works of Mumbai’s coastal road project delayed Also read: Mumbai coastal road project 36% completed: BMC