The BMC is about to start work on tendering for the Goregaon-Mulund Link Road (GMLR), the last and the longest of the city's three planned east-west links. The 16 km GMLR will comprise a 9 km elevated road from Saki Vihar to beyond LBS Road in Mulund, and the 7 km Aarey road from Western Express Highway to Saki Vihar, which will be widened and re-laid with cement concrete. The other two eastwest connectors, JogeshwariVikroli and Santacruz-Chembur Link Roads, are 10.8 and 6.45 km long and were opened in March. GMLR is expected to give much-needed relief to the congested WEH.
Tenders will be invited in three months and work is expected to start in six months.The planned alignment is such that BMC officials hope the project to be implemented without hiccups: there will not be any issues of land acquisition, re-settlement, green cover destruction or socio-political intervention. As per an earlier plan, the road was proposed to pass through Sanjay Gandhi National Park, and thus got stuck in clearances. Also, the work would have been costly and time-consuming as a portion of the route would have required the construction of a tunnel. “The land for the proposed route is owned by the BMC and so there will be no hurdles. We have changed the plan in such a way that 300-400 trees would be saved and a few would be replanted. Thus there will be no green-cover destruction,” said additional municipal commissioner (roads) SVR Srinivas.
At present, Aarey road is riddled with potholes, which the BMC plans to start filling soon. “I have instructed the local ward to repair the road. After civic takeover of the road, toll collection has been stopped and the toll post demolished. In the first phase, we will turn it into a four-lane road and later widen it to six lanes,” Srinivas said.
Till Monday, the road was with the dairy development department and maintained by the public works department.
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