The Mumbai Trans Harbour Sea link (MTHL) also popularly called as Sewri Navha Seva sealink comprising of 21.80 Kms (about 16.5 km Sea Bridge + about 5.5 km Viaduct on land) will be having 100 years of design life, informed Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA).
MMRDA is the nodal agency taking care of all projects related works and JICA is the funding agency for the said project costing Rs 17,843 crore. According to the MMRDA, since the pillars of the bridge will be passing from sea, high-quality material is being used so it can have high resistance to chloride attack, protection from high corrosion with enhanced durability, excellent resistance against fretting fatigue.
Interestingly, this bridge will have structural steel equivalent to three Howrah bridges located at Kolkata, Rebar (reinforcing steel used as rods in concrete) equivalent to 12 Eiffle towers among other features. It will be one of the longest sea bridges of the world once it is ready. Moreover, this sea bridge will have large span orthotropic steel decks of up to 180 mtrs long and of 2,800 Metric tonnes weight. A first-of-its-kind engineering feat, informed the MMRDA.
MMRDA Commissioner R A Rajeev commented, "Despite having several challenges while undertaking the bridge civil construction work everything is going on progressively. Due to the existing oil pipelines in the sea the alignment was tweaked so to prevent any type of damage. Moreover, we are taking utmost care in this pandemic time for the laborers working on site, and the work flow has doubled compared to previous year."
He further added, "The MTHL will act as a crucial connectivity as several other projects are also planned like CIDCO's Coastal Road, Alibaug Virar Corridor with MSRDC, Sewri -Worli Connector and the much awaited creek bridge connecting Bhayander (West) and Vasai (West). All these connectivity will give signal free ring route to Mumbai by 2030 bringing significant infrastructure development."
For the easy execution of the project work so to attain the set deadline, it is divided into four packages. Package one to three comprises civil work and Package 4 consist setting up intelligent transport system.
