Mumbai: Be prepared for more traffic snarls from this September, as soil investigation will be starting for two Metro corridors. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) will award the civil work contracts for the Wadala-Thane Metro-4 corridor and DN Nagar-Mankhurd Metro-2B corridor by next month.
Earlier in January this year, the MMRDA had floated bids for the 23.5km long DN Nagar-Mankhurd Metro-2B corridor and the 32km-long Wadala-Thane Metro-4 corridor. In response to which, around ten companies including Tata, J Kumar, NCC
and Simplex Afcons had shown interest in constructing the Metro corridors.
A senior MMRDA official said, “We have almost evaluated the technical bids for the project and will complete the evaluation of the financial bids in another week or so. We will be in a position to award contracts by the end of this month. By the end of August or the beginning of September, we can expect the soil investigation work to take off, followed by piling and other civil work post monsoons.”
It is likely that this will increase bottlenecks in the already choked city roads, as work for the other three corridors is already ongoing in the city. This would also mean that barricading would be done in the area building of the Metro corridors, which would be done after getting the traffic management plan approved by the traffic department.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday the MMRDA announced that launching of ‘U’ girders is in progress for the Andheri (east) to Dahisar (east) Metro-7 corridor.
“To ensure smooth and safe launching of the girders, MMRDA is in consultation with the traffic police and have decided to divert the north bound traffic on the Western Express Highway (WEH) to the south bound carriageway for a stretch of about 500 to 700 meters ahead of the launching locations. The diversion will be effective from 23.30 hours to 6.00 hours,” MMRDA said in a statement issued on Tuesday.
However, this would not mean that WEH would remain shut in the night.
