Mumbai’s Gopal Krishna Gokhale Bridge to partially open for public before monsoon

Additional municipal commissioner (Projects) P. Velrasu, who is monitoring the work, said that the BMC is parallelly carrying out reconstruction works for the new bridge.

“It is expected that by March 15, the railways will officially hand over the entire work to BMC. However, our works have been going on simultaneously along with the railways and the construction of the new bridge is already in progress at a workshop. This project is going well within the deadline and ahead of monsoon this year, we may open one arm of this bridge for vehicular and pedestrian movement,” Velrasu told The Indian Express on Sunday.

He said that as on March 12, the BMC has completed demolition works on the east and western sides of the bridge, which falls under the civic body’s jurisdiction. He also said that the foundation work and work of creating a retaining wall on the boundary for this bridge is also in the final stage.

The BMC had awarded the work order for reconstructing this bridge in January, two months after it was shut for pedestrian and vehicular movement. Pegged at a cost of Rs 80 crore, the fabricated steel structure is being constructed at a workshop and will be brought to the project site when it is ready. It will be then assembled and launched from the piers that the BMC is building at the site.

Located between Andheri and Ville Parle, the Gokhale Bridge is a major connecting point that joins Andheri East and West. Earlier in November 2022, the BMC had written to the traffic department of the Mumbai Police, asking them to shut the bridge for vehicular movement, after an audit found out that the girders and the columns of this bridge has been degraded due to corrosion and environment degradation.