Mumbai: Nearly 15 years after then Lok Sabha Speaker Manohar Joshi insisted upon a vehicular subway near Kurla railway station, the project is nearly completion. However, the connectivity will be limited to pedestrian traffic.
“The project was proposed, not as per the master plan, but due to the demand made by Mr. Joshi. Technical evaluations indicated that the low-lying area of Kurla and Govandi would put the vehicular subway at the risk of flooding, defeating the very purpose of east-west connectivity in the monsoon,” S.O. Kori, chief engineer (bridges) in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), told The Hindu .
A.K. Singh, spokesperson for the Central Railway (CR), said the project was started over a decade ago. The initial plan to use it for four-wheelers and the subsequent proposal for two-wheelers and three-wheelers did not seem feasible.
Meanwhile, social activist Anil Galgali, who has been pursuing the BMC on the status of the project through RTI for the last two years, said the project that commenced 14 years ago, has failed to meet the objective. “Lack of coordination between the CR and the BMC has resulted in the project remaining incomplete for 15 years.”
The CR spokesperson said, “After the project was finalised as a pedestrian connect, a joint committee was set up last year to ensure better coordination between the CR and the BMC. The BMC would be in a better position to explain the status.”
Mr. Galgali said the BMC has spent ₹2,94,88,383 for only the approach road to the 129.9-metre-long, 7.6-metre-width, and 2.6-metre-high subway on the western side of railway tracks. MJL Constructions was appointed to complete this portion in a nine-month period (excluding the monsoon season) beginning February 15, 2016.
According to the BMC chief engineer, the tunnelling was nearly completed by the CR long ago, after which around 15 metres of work and the approach roads on either side of the station to the subway remained to be over. It was only after the Central government auditor raised questions that the work was taken up again and tenders were floated.
Apart from the tunnelling work, the CR spent ₹3,84,43,000 for the remaining portion of work on the railway land. Solapur-based Ms Mahesh Roopchandani commenced work on October 21, 2014.
Mr. Kori said, “There were delays by the CR. They were unable to develop the land under the BMC jurisdiction. The land housed shopkeepers, who were against the project. The barricading by the CR was even broken down by locals.”
“The work is mostly complete and now all that remains is filling, tiling and lighting. We can open the subway to pedestrian traffic well before Diwali if we need to?,” he said.
