In line with its plans, 17% of work on the Mumbai Coastal Road, the Maharashtra government’s ambitious infrastructure project to decongest traffic movement in the megacity, has been completed.
 
Municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal has said that 17% of the physical work stands completed as of now and the coastal road will be functional in July 2023.  
 
Work on the project started in October 2018 but had to stop due to litigations. In July 2019 the Bombay high court quashed the Coastal Road Zone (CRZ) clearances granted to the project. In December last year, work restarted after the supreme court stayed the stayed the high court order.
 
The eight-lane freeway will start from Marine Lines in south Mumbai and connect northern suburbs via the Bandra-Worli sea link and significantly expected to reduce travel time.
 
Spelling out figures, Chahal said that the Maine Drive to the Worli-Bandra sea link stretch of the coastal road is being built by MCGM at a cost of Rs. 12,721 crore. Substantial work has happened in the last couple of months by incurring an expenditure of Rs. 1,281 crores till November 2020. As many as 175 acres of land under Arabian Sea has been reclaimed, and 102 acres of remaining land under the sea is being reclaimed.
 
Chahal also added that 400 metre-long tunnel boring machine (diameter of 39.6 feet – the largest size ever in India) now stands fully assembled on reclaimed land and tunnel boring will commence from January 7.

Read more about this ambitious project:
All you wanted to know about Mumbai’s coastal road