Eastern Freeway : Snapshot

Sewri - Worli corridor on fast track

With the Mumbai Trans-Harbour Link (MTHL) finally hitting its stride the past couple of weeks, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) has begun to fast-track the elevated Sewri-Worli corridor that will act as a feeder for the MTHL.
The Sewri-Worli corridor — a proposed four-lane 4.25-kilometre stretch expected to cost Rs.616 crore at the current rates — will be the east-west connector that would allow motorists from the western parts of the city to make their way to the MTHL at Sewri.
According to MMRDA officials, the connector needs to be ready by the time the MTHL gets built — which is expected around November 2018 — to make the Rs9,320 crore sea bridge project viable in terms of traffic estimates.
One of the biggest hurdles that the project was facing, that of the corridor crossing the ten tracks at Elphinstone and Parel stations, has now been overcome, the officials said.
Additional metropolitan commissioner (MMRDA) Ashwini Bhide said, “Because of the Western Railway’s elevated railway corridor between Churchgate and Virar, the Sewri-Worli link was supposed to have gone over these 10 tracks at a height of nearly 20 metres. Constructing an elevated road at that height is a very difficult task. So we have decided to have the connector at the same level as the Elphinstone bridge.”
According to Bhide, the general agreement drawing of the road overbridge at the point where it crosses the tracks at the two stations has been submitted to railway authorities.
The elevated road would need to cross the flyovers at Senapati Bapat and Ambedkar roads and go over the monorail viaduct as well as the Harbour line and Mumbai Port Trust set of tracks closer to Sewri. It will also have ramps to connect it to the under-construction Eastern Freeway.

Mumbai Railways' snippets

Mumbai’s proposed circular arc railway plan to connect CST and Churchgate with rail got a probable push  when the railways and the state government representatives came together to understand the “plan of decongesting south Mumbai using a network of elevated and underground tracks.
The technical study of the master plan developed by city-based engineer Ketan Goradia has been approved by the railway board, which has asked the local railways to look into its feasibility.
Goradia has proposed an arc network to connect the Western Railway (WR) with the Central Railway (CR) to increase access to south Mumbai, apart from eventually creating two dedicated fast tracks—one running clockwise and the other anti-clockwise—between Virar and Kalyan .
The arc network help commuters get from Churchgate to areas like Ballard Pier or Fort, closer to Masjid Bunder.
Besides the CST-Churchgate connectivity, the plan includes a circular railway plan on the Harbour line too. Another suggestion in the master plan is to have platforms with fast and slow trains in the same direction parking on the two sides of an island platform.
To cost about Rs3,000 crore, the project will augment the capacity expected out of the ambitious Rs40,000-crore elevated railways project. “While the elevated railway will take 10 years to be implemented, the arc network project can be completed within two years, thus increasing capacity from the present 70 lakh to 1.2 crore passengers a day,’’ added Goradia.

Day lighting on the Eastern Freeway

One of Mumbai's most ambitious road projects will see the light of day today literally.
Engineers digging a pair of tunnels under the BARC hills near Chembur are scheduled to break through the other end by late afternoon or early evening, capping almost three years of excavation in tricky terrain and clearing one of the toughest parts of the 17-km Eastern Freeway.
In engineering parlance, Thursday's event is called Day-lighting, a reference to the rush of sunlight that will fill the tunnel as the last rock crumbles.
The 505-metre twin tunnel is part of the Eastern Freeway which will connect P'Dmello Road to the Eastern Express Highway in Ghatkopar. The Freeway will be a traffic signal-less, access controlled road.
The Eastern Freeway, which is being built at a cost of nearly Rs 1,000 crore, will take you to Ghatkopar from P D’Mello Road in less than half an hour. Currently, it takes anything between an hour and an hour-and-a-half.
The MMRDA has spent close to Rs 80 crore on the tunnel and has rehabilitated close to 5,000 structures, including 30 shrines, while laying down the Freeway.

Raj Thackeray jams Mumbai

Maharashtra Navanirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray has claimed at a rally that he will continue to fight for the cause of ‘Marathi Manoos’ (Marathi speaking population) and has no agenda to take up Hindutva as an ideology for his party.
“The media has reported that because I am holding a protest rally to condemn violence committed by some Islamic groups, I would have an Hindutva agenda on my mind. But I want to clarify that there is no such agenda. I will stick to the Marathi manoos agenda,” said Raj.
A protest rally to condemn attacks on media and policemen, which took place on August 11 at Azad Maidan, was organised by MNS. The rally went off peacefully without any untoward incident. Mumbai Police had put over 15,000 men out on the roads to ensure peace during the rally. An officer said about 50,000 people took part in the MNS rally.
Thousands of MNS supporters gathered at Girgaum Chowpaty and marched towards Azad Maidan under Raj Thackeray’s leadership. This caused a lot of traffic chaos on Marine Drive and near the Chatrapati Shivaji Railway Terminus area in the afternoon. Raj Thackeray had said earlier that he will take out a march to demand the resignation of home minister RR Patil and police commissioner Arup Patnaik for their alleged inability to handle violence that took place on August 11. Speaking at the rally, Thackeray said, “the sole purpose of today’s rally is to demand state home minister and city police commissioner’s resignations. What happened on August 11 was shameful. Police and media were attacked. But I am not doing this because the attackers happened to be Muslims but because policemen who were attacked were Maharashtrians. My information is that most attackers were from outside and many were migrants from Bangladesh. I will not tolerate outsiders attacking policemen from my state.” Thackeray said that it was very dangerous that more and more incidents of attacks on policemen were being reported in Mumbai city.
Since Raj Thackeray announced Tuesday’s protest march and rally, there was widespread speculation in a section of media whether he was shifting focus from his Marathi speaking supporters to Hindutva, in order to attract larger number of voters. However he denied this and claimed that he will stick to his Marathi manoos agenda, without diluting it.