Relief in store as major flyover to be expanded

Nidhi Shah,who works at the French consulate,spends nearly an hour to get to Tilak Nagar from BKC,mostly due to heavy traffic from Sion to the Suman Nagar junction.

Nidhi Shah,who works at the French consulate,spends nearly an hour to get to Tilak Nagar from BKC,mostly due to heavy traffic from Sion to the Suman Nagar junction. There is no traffic after that,but to get there I spend nearly 25 minutes to cross a five-minute distance, Shah said.

Commuters like Shah,who use the Eastern Express Highway (EEH) to travel towards Sion,Thane or Panvel will soon be a relieved lot as a decade-old plan is executed and the Suman Nagar junction,a major bottleneck,expands to twice its size.

The Maharashtra State Road Development Corp (MSRDC) is planning to commission four extra lanes of about five metres each at the junction on May 15. The project is estimated to cost around Rs 12.12 crore. At present,the 10-lane EEH shrinks to a four-lane road between Suman Nagar and Priyadarshni Circle,bringing traffic to a crawl.We had planned to finish by May 15 but the work is likely to go on till the third week of May as a few utilities need to be moved. We are clocking 18-20 hours of work daily, an MSRDC engineer said,adding that the only work left is developing the crust and laying paver blocks,which will take around 10 days.

With the commissioning of the new lanes,the northbound traffic from Sion can use the existing four lanes. Those going towards Panvel or Thane will continue on the highway,while those traveling to Chembur will be required to use the newly-constructed Suman Nagar flyover. The four new lanes would be available for the southbound traffic.

The extra lanes have been created by demolishing embankments that were under a rail over-bridge. Piers were erected on either side of the new lanes and a girder,manufactured by a railway-approved Raipur workshop,was launched for the rail traffic.

The work had started in February 2009,but was delayed as the MSRDC had to wait for 1.5 years for the girder to be manufactured and then for another year to get permission from the Central Railway for launching it.

The girder was launched in February this year. The accommodation of three water pipelines in the way also added to the delay.

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In 2005,the MSRDC had attempted to widen this junction using a box-pushing technique,but the method failed due to geological problems.

Work in Progress

It has been been five months since the Suman Nagar flyover was opened for the public,but the work remains incomplete. Though the monsoon is expected by June,the contractor is yet to put in place a drainage system for the flyover. The partially-destroyed Anna Bhau Sathe Udya,located opposite Suman Nagar,is also yet to be restored.

It takes time to complete this kind of work. We have the material ready. We are concentrating on completing the restoration of the park first. We hope to complete the work by June, said an on-site sub-contractor.

The flyover was opened early December after a five-year delay and the MSRDC had said the remaining work would be completed by end-2011.

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