Mumbai : To ensure that the road does not need to be dug for laying of cables in future the BMC has experimented the first utility corridor below Lallu bhai Park Road in Andheri. The civic body started the laying of a utility corridor in April 2022. The 1.8 km of road will soon be completed with cross connection ducts also laid at every 30 metres.
The BMC had undertaken a work of road repairs in the city worth Rs. 2,000 crores for which work order was issued in January 2022. As part of it the civic body undertook concretisation work of Lallu bhai Park Road. With it, the BMC decided to place ducts along this road stretch which would allow cables to go through it. This would help to avoid digging up of the stretch for laying of new cables.
Utility corridor was first demanded in 2017
Ameet Satam, MLA from Andheri said, "Utility corridor was a concept first demanded by me in Maharashtra state assembly in the year 2017 and thereon the first road where this was planned to be executed is Lallu bhai Park road. The cross connection ducts laid at every 30 metres will facilitate it carrying the utility lines to either side of the buildings as per requirement."
Satam in his letter to the chief minister Eknath Shinde and deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis in July, 2022 has said that, the bad state of roads in the city is also due to the continuous and unplanned digging that is carried out for various purposes. Therefore there should be a provision of making utility corridor in the road tender itself.
The city has over 30 different kinds of utility cables such as electricity, gas etc that go below its roads. The BMC had deployed machinery for conducting ground penetration radar survey to map the utilities running below the road after a request from local MLA, said a senior civic official.
