Coastal Road: Final girder to be placed on April 18; phase 1 to be completed soon

Civic officials on Sunday said the final girder have been loaded out from the Nhava Jetty in Navi Mumbai and is expected to reach the worksite by April 18.

“After this bow-string bridge is launched, it will mark the completion of the first phase of MCRP. The final launching of girder will take approximately two days, depending on the weather and tidal conditions,” Pawan Padiyar, planning head of Hindustan Construction Company, executing agency for this project, told Express on Sunday.

The process of launching the girders began in February and initially the smaller-sized girders were brought to the worksite. The process of launching girders of bridge refers to placing the complete superstructure of a bridge on the foundation pillars.

The bridge will be a prefabricated structure and the entire process of launching the girders is being taken on barges anchored in the worksite at Worli on Arabian Sea. (Express Photo)

“After the girders are assembled, they are transported to the worksite and the entire process of girder launching is being carried out in the Arabian Sea since there is no adequate land-strip available from where the bridge could be launched. The main challenge in implementing this project is that Worli has shallow water and thick density of bedrock. Therefore, during the low tide, the rocks become visible,” Padiyar said.

After the girders are launched, the work of creating asphalt roads will be taken up. At present, the coastal road is operational only between 8 am and 8 pm on weekdays for south-bound traffic and officials are aiming to make the entire road operational by May-end.

The making of this bridge was a major hurdle that civic authorities had to overcome for completing the MCRP project.

The bridge will be a prefabricated structure and the entire process of launching the girders is being taken on barges anchored in the worksite at Worli on Arabian Sea. (Express Photo)

The fishing community demanded that the gap between the pillars on which the bridge is being created should be 200 metres, while the BMC’s recommendation was 60 metres, which would provide them a safe passage.

The fisherfolk went on a strike and the BMC had to revise the plan and had to remove one pillar to provide a wider navigation span to the boats. Since the engineers cannot erect an additional pillar and the distance between the existing mono-piles have increased owing to removal of one pillar, the civic body had resorted to the design of a ‘bowstring’ girder bridge.

The speciality of these kind of bridges is that spans are held together through high-tension chords instead of having a base support like that on pillars. The chords form an arch-shaped girder from the outside and holds the ends of the bridge tightly with the surface.