BMC completes 2km of tunnel boring for coastal road project | Mumbai news - Hindustan Times
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BMC completes 2km of tunnel boring for coastal road project

ByPratip Acharya
Dec 31, 2021 12:27 AM IST

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Thursday said that it has completed 2km of tunnel boring for its ambitious Mumbai Coastal Road Project (MCRP) on December 29

MUMBAI The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Thursday said that it has completed 2km of tunnel boring for its ambitious Mumbai Coastal Road Project (MCRP) on December 29. The 10.58 km long coastal road originates near the Princess Street flyover at Marine Drive and will connect to the Bandra-Worli Sea Link (BWSL) at Worli. As part of this project, the BMC is constructing two 2.7 km long underground tunnels that will run parallely between Priyadarshini Park (PDP) and Girgaon Chowpatty. The tunnels will run 75 metre below the surface at Malabar Hill and 25 metre below the surface at Girgaon.

BMC completes 2km of tunnel boring for coastal road project (HT)
BMC completes 2km of tunnel boring for coastal road project (HT)

For carrying out the boring of these tunnels, the BMC has procured the largest tunnel boring machine (TBM) of the country which has a diameter of 12.2 metre and named it Mavala. The boring for the first tunnel began on January 11 this year and on December 29 the BMC completed boring of 2km of the first tunnel. Speaking to Hindustan Times, Vijay Nighot, chief engineer of the project, said that boring of the remaining 70 metre will be finished within the first week of January.

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Earlier on September 4, 2021, the BMC finished boring the first 1km of this tunnel. “It took us nearly eight months to bore the first 1km while the remaining 1km was completed within just four months. The second phase of work started after monsoon and the second wave had also receded by that time due to which the pace of the project picked up,” said Nighot.

After boring of the first tunnel gets completed, the tunnel will be taken out at the Girgaon end. Thereafter, digging of the second tunnel will start parallel from there which will be taken out at PDP. Nighot added that boring for the second tunnel will start in March 2022 and end by December 2022.

“The second tunnel will be dug in the same manner as the first one. It usually takes eight to nine months to finish the entire digging. Due to the restrictions imposed following the second wave in early 2021, the deadline got delayed by a few months,” Nighot said.

The entire MCRP is divided into four packages and the tunneling works fall under the fourth package. Each of the tunnels will have four lane roads that will enable traffic movement from both ways. Nighot said that preparations for construction of roads inside the tunnels have already been done simultaneously with the boring process.

The BMC in a statement released on Thursday also said that 50% of the entire MCRP project has been completed, including the reclamation works. The construction works for this project started in 2018 and a 48-month deadline was set up back then. But owing to the pandemic and various other legal issues, the project got delayed and the current deadline of the project is December 2023. The budget for this project including the construction works has been pegged at 12,950 crore.

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