MMRDA sees destination Colaba for Metro, Eastern Freeway

Proposal to open up port land along city’s eastern coast brings junked plan back on table

Even as plans to open up port land along Mumbai’s eastern coast are being firmed up, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) sees an opportunity to extend its 30.7-km Thane-Wadala Metro and its 16.8-km Eastern Freeway Project up to Colaba.
The expert land development committee under the Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT) has in its draft report included MMRDA’s suggestions to utilise a part of 1,800-acre port land to create an underground leg of the Metro from Wadala to Regal Chowk in Colaba. The panel, appointed by Union Minister for Shipping Nitin Gadkari, has completed its draft report, and is at present awaiting detailed comments from the ministry to fine-tune it prior to submission.

The sudden availability of land has allowed the MMRDA to revive a Metro rail alignment it had junked earlier due to non-feasibility of the project and lack of critical mass required for ridership along the route. The proposed Wadala-Ghatkopar-Thane-Kasarvadavali corridor will now be extended on its southern end up to Regal Chowk. MMRDA Commissioner U P S Madan said the original alignment of Metro line 5 was meant to be extended till Regal Chowk. “However, after we conducted a study, we discovered that there won’t be enough ridership to the south of Wadala as the port trust land was underdeveloped. Now that the port trust is ready to develop the area, the expert panel asked us if we were interested in a southward link and we decided to propose one,” said Madan, adding that the current estimated cost per km of the Metro line was Rs 700 crore as per the Detailed Project Report.

Another reason to scrap the Wadala-Colaba leg was also that the Central Railway’s habour line, which ran parallel to the port trust land up to CST station, was thought to be sufficient to cater to the existing population. With the MbPT expert panel recommending dedicated zones for businesses, export, tourism and entertainment in its report, the load on the existing railway line was expected to increase manifold, necessitating the need for another mass transit mode.

The Eastern Freeway, that at present spans from Ghatkopar-Mankhurd Link Road to Orange gate in P D’Mello Road, has also been proposed to be extended up to Regal Chowk in Colaba. The move is expected to greatly reduce travel time that is currently lost due to the traffic bottleneck along the choc-a-bloc P D’Mello Road, bringing succour to office goers in the commercial districts of Fort and Nariman Point.
Like the proposed Wadala-Colaba leg of Metro, the P D’Mello Road-CST-Colaba arm of the freeway stretching up to the Prince of Wales Museum was also part of the MMRDA’s original alignment on the drawing board. It could not be executed due to issues with heritage structures along the route.

“Had the freeway been extended beyond P D’Mello Road, it would have cut through several heritage structures and precincts such as the steps of the Asiatic library, the General Post office building, part of Horniman circle garden, a bit of the museum and the Reserve Bank of India complex, among several others,” said a heritage committee member.

Madan said the revived proposal would not be very different from the one proposed earlier. “The issue of heritage structures, of course, will be relevant and will have to be resolved,” he said. The expert panel, however, has not yet included the freeway extension proposal in its report.

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