The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is going to award the work of the construction of two underground tunnels as part of the Goregaon Mulund Link Road (GMLR) project to a joint venture of Hyderabad-based NCC Limited and Mumbai-based J Kumar Infra Projects Limited.
The 12.2-km-long GMLR will connect Goregaon in the western suburbs with Mulund in the eastern suburbs, through a serious of arterial roads, underground tunnels and bridges.
It was in October 2022, that the BMC had floated tenders for construction of 4.7-km twin tunnels with an estimate of Rs 6,237 crore. But owing to requests from bidders, the submission deadline had to be extended four times.
Afcons Infrastructure, Larsen & Toubro, NCC–J Kumar Infraprojects (JKIL) joint venture (JV) were the three firms to submit their bids, out of which the NCC JV emerged as the lowest bidder.
Twin Tunnels
As part of the futuristic GMLR project, the BMC has envisaged a twin tunnel below Sanjay Gandhi National Park, the only national park in the world to be located within a metropolitan area.
The 4.7-km-long tunnel will start at Film City at Goregaon and exit at Khindipada at Mulund. The tunnel, with a diametre of around 13 metre, will have a depth varying between 20 and 160 metre, depending on the surrounding topography.
The tunnelling works for the project will be done using the tunnel boring machine and the tunnel will be equipped with advanced ventilation, lighting systems, and electric surveillance.
GMLR Project
The Rs 8,550 crore Goregaon Mulund Link Road project envisages creating an east-west corridor for traffic movement, connecting Western Express Highway at Goregaon and Eastern Express Highway at Mulund.
Currently, there is no direct connectivity between these areas, and commuters have to take a detour from either Ghodbunder Road in Thane or Powai. Both these roads remain grid-locked during peak hours.
The entire project has been divided into four phases and at present the first and second phase is on, which includes construction of flyovers, traffic interchanges, widening of existing roads and creating traffic interchanges.
Quoting P Velrasu, additional municipal commissioner (projects), an Indian Express report said that the work on the twin tunnels, being built under the third phase, is expected to start from October 2023 and it will take 60 months to get completed.