The Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) visitors will get a major relief from traffic which they used to experience at Kalanagar junction on a daily basis. The much awaited Bandra Worli Sea Link to BKC second arm flyover is ready to be open for vehicular traffic from Monday onwards. Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray will be officially inaugurating the newly built flyover on Monday built by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA). Commuters who wish to travel from sealink to BKC need not wait to the Kalanagar junction's signal anymore, which is a major bottleneck. With the newly built 604 metre long, two-lane flyover commuters can now directly travel to BKC seamlessly.
The FPJ had consistently reported about the Sealink-BKC flyover progress work. Reportedly, the said flyover was expected to be open in May. However, due to the lockdown and surge in COVID-19 cases in the second wave, leading to the diversion of industrial oxygen— which is essential for construction— for medical use, the project was delayed. Besides, shortage of manpower was another hurdle.
BKC which is the key commercial centre in the suburbs of Mumbai, the MMRDA is the special planning authority. Therefore, in a bid to remove the bottleneck at Kalanagar junction it had proposed three flyovers. The first flyover having two lanes and allows commuters travelling from BKC junction towards the Bandra-Worli sea link is ready and already open for traffic. The second two-lane flyover from the sea link towards BKC will be opened from today. While the third two-lane flyover will direct traffic from Dharavi junction towards the sea link and likely to be ready by November this year.
The Kalanagar junction decongestion plan, having three flyovers, has cost of Rs 103.73 crore. M/s. RPS Infraprojects Private Limited, sub contractor of M/s. Simplex Infrastructures Limited, appointed in January 2020 is carrying out the civil works.
Apart from inaugurating the Sealink-BKC second arm flyover, MMRDA to also hand over the newly built 2,000 beds Covid care hospital to the BMC in presence of CM today. The said makeshift Covid-19 treatment hospital 70 per cent of beds will have oxygen facility. It will also have intensive care unit (ICU) beds to treat critical patients and about 22 beds reserved for children. Besides, the facility is equipped with ventilator machines, dialysis machines, function motarised beds, CT-scan machine, RO System, quarantine beds, oxygen pipeline connection, noiseless session, portable X-ray machine, Electrocardiography machine, Pulse Oximeter, computed radiology solutions and digital BP apparatus, mortuary etc.
