The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is set to begin digging of the two twin tunnels for its ambitious Goregaon Mulund Link Road (GMLR) project early next year, a senior civic official said on Saturday. Speaking to The Indian Express, civic officials said at present a shaft is being dug at the GMLR site from which the Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) will be launched. Meanwhile, to take stock of the progress of civil works, Mumbai’s municipal commissioner and state-appointed administrator Bhushan Gagrani visited the worksites of GMLR as well as the Mumbai Coastal Road Project (Versova-Bhayander) on Saturday. Earlier this year, the BMC imported the TBM from Japan and the assembling work is currently underway. Civic officials said since there will be two twin tunnels, the authorities will be using two TBMs for the project unlike the Mumbai coastal road, in which the twin tunnels were excavated by using a single TBM. “At present, assembling of the spare parts of the machine is underway and the TBM is expected to be ready by January next year. Following that the digging of the first twin tunnel will start,” an official said. The official added that by December, the second TBM will arrive at the spot and after its assembling is completed the digging for the second twin tunnel will begin immediately. “The shaft is almost ready with work continuously underway even during the monsoon. The TBM will be lowered in the shaft early next year and we can expect it to start boring during the first half of 2026 itself,” the official added. The ambitious GMLR project will be a 12.2-km high-speed corridor that will link Goregaon in Mumbai’s western suburbs with Mulund in the east. The tunnels will be a key aspect of this project since it will be 6.65-km long. The tunnels will pass below the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) and will have a varied depth of 20 metres to 160 metres. The overall cost of the project has been pegged at Rs 14,000 crore, while the cost of digging the underground tunnels has been pegged at Rs 6,600 crore. The twin tunnels will have a distance of 300 metres between them and have a total of six vehicular lanes. Besides this, the tunnels will also be equipped with CCTV cameras, a state-of-the-art fire fighting system as well as utility channels and rain water harvesting lines. Gagrani also reviewed the status of the second phase of the Mumbai coastal road project, which will connect Versova in the western suburbs with Dahisar at north Mumbai.
