Mumbai: Thane-Borivali tunnel to undergo design change

Mumbai: A year after the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) bagged the Thane-Borivali tunnel project, the agency is still working on redesigning the project.

"We are reworking on the project design and various safety systems that are required to be incorporated into the project, as the tunnel will be about 10.25 km long," said SVR Srinivas, Metropolitan Commissioner, MMRDA.

MMRDA took over the project from MSRDC one year back

In October 2021, the then Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray had in a function publicly asked the MMRDA to take up the twin tunnel project from the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC). Then, he asked the MMRDA to revisit the Detailed Project Report (DPR) for the project that goes underneath the Sanjay Gandhi National Park.

Work on the twin tunnels was to commence in March 2022, as per a statement made by the then MMRDA Chairman and current Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.

According to the initial plans, this Rs11,235 crore project will have entry-exit points at Ekta Nagar near Magathane in Borivali and next to Tikuji-Ni-Wadi on Ghodbunder Road, Thane, with three lanes on each of the directions.

The connectivity project, which will drastically reduce travel time between Borivali and Thane to just 15 minutes, will require acquisition of 16.54 hectares of private land and 40.46 hectares of land within Sanjay Gandhi National Park. The calculations and estimates show that once the project is ready, it will reduce 10.5 lakh metric tonnes of fuel consumption and 36% of carbon dioxide emissions.

It will take around five-and-a-half years for motorists to start using it.