Will Santa Cruz-Chembur Link Road meet weekend deadline?

MUMBAI: The city's development authority is racing against time to complete work on the Santa Cruz-Chembur Link Road (SCLR) and open it before its self-imposed deadline of this weekend.

"Workers are busy removing debris, marking lanes and fixing tiles on the median. We are racing against time to open the link road before the weekend," said an official of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA).

On April 13, MMRDA officials had told TOI that the SCLR would be thrown open to motorists by this week. After inspecting the site on Wednesday, MMRDA chief U P S Madan said he will announce the exact date when motorists will be allowed to use this east-west link road on Thursday.

Touted as the city's most-delayed infrastructure project, the SCLR will provide direct connectivity between Western Express Highway (WEH) and Eastern Express Highway (EEH) via Kalina, Kurla and Tilak Nagar. The entire 6.5-km-long stretch, including the country's first double-decker flyover, is expected to cater to two lakh vehicles daily.

It will help motorists travel from Santa Cruz to Chembur and vice versa in 15-20 minutes, said MMRDA officials. At present, motorists take 60-90 minutes to travel between the two places. They either take the Sion-Dharavi detour or use the Juhu-Vikhroli Link Road or Andheri-Ghatkopar Link Road.

Irked by the delay, the World Bank had withdrawn funding mid-way. An MMRDA official said, "It was huge project...We had to resettle more than 3,500 project-affected people. There were also issues will relocation of a religious structure, and a politician's interference, too, did not help."

Poor planning, too, was one of the reasons for the delay. "MMRDA blamed us for the delay. But the design of the road overbridge across the tracks was such that it would not have got the commissioner of railway safety's approval. The consultants should have thought about this long ago," said a railway official. "We had also given blanket approval to launch girders more than a year ago. But the girder-launching work was carried out six months ago as they did not arrive from Punjab at the site, where, too, no preparations were made."

MMRDA denied the claims. "It is easy to lay the blame, but the work was challenging. We also had to face several court cases. We have learnt many lessons from this project," said an official.