Plan to link Freeway with Marine Drive scrapped

The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) will scrap the construction of an elevated arm to connect the Eastern Freeway with Marine Drive citing difficulties in getting Right of Way (RoW) for the construction.

The proposed plan was to construct an elevated road starting at P D’Mello Road near Eastern Freeway that would pass through Sardar Vallabhai Patel (SVP) Road and go up to Chowpatty, which is near Marine Drive.

The plan was to decongest the traffic at SVP Road and the one coming from Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST), Pydhonie, Dongri and Mohommad Ali Road, travelling towards Marine Drive from Eastern Freeway using the SVP Road.

“We have concluded that the extension would be feasible financially, but when it comes to technical or practical implementation of the elevated extension there will be trouble regarding RoW if there are temples, mosques or overhead railway crossing which would make it difficult to design or construct the alignment of the proposed elevated extension,” said a senior MMRDA official.

The proposal of connecting Eastern Freeway with Marine Drive was in discussion after various studies carried out by the MMRDA concluded the extension by construction of an elevated link road was feasible.

“Before preparing the detailed project report (DPR) and at the time of drafting a concrete plan for the extension, we realised the extension would not be possible. The SVP Road is already congested and is a popular route at the time of Ganpati visarjan procession during the Ganesh festival; it would not be possible to carry out construction for an elevated arm in such a scenario,” the senior MMRDA official added.

The 16-km-long Eastern Freeway currently starts from Orange Gate on P D’Mello Road in the south and ends at the Indian Oil Junction on the Ghatkopar-Mankhurd Link road in the north.