Team of 12 to inspect all 445 bridges in Mumbai

Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), along with experts from the railways and the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, will carry out a structural audit of Mumbai’s 445 bridges from Friday onwards. The move has been initiated following the Gokhale Bridge mishap in Andheri on Tuesday, in which five people were injured.

Twelve teams of experts from BMC, the railways and IIT have been formed for the survey. They will inspect all the bridges, including rail-over bridges, road-over bridges, foot-over bridges, skywalks and flyovers. According to railway officials, their first priority will be to inspect bridges that are at least 40-year-old. Of them, priority, will be given to bridges like the Tilak bridge, which is very old and is in a dilapidated condition.

Following the Andheri bridge mishap, Railway Minister Piyush Goel had ordered an inspection of all the bridges, which cross over the railway tracks. Acting on this, BMC chief Ajoy Mehta on Thursday held a high-level meeting with the general managers of Central and Western Railway.

Chief Public Relations Officer of WR, Mr Ravinder Bhakar said that it was decided to hold monthly coordination meetings, which would be attended by Chief Bridge Engineers and ADRM (Infrastructure) from the Railways and engineering officials from the BMC. All pending issues regarding design, drawings, approvals, land issues among others, would be discussed at  these meetings along with measures to be taken to resolve them. Mr. Bhakar also said that they would ensure that there is no scope for delay in carrying out repair work.

The possibility of creating a corpus fund of an appropriate amount was also discussed to ensure that sufficient funds would always be available.