Mumbai: More woes for motorists as motorable path on RoBs to get narrower

Tired of the roadway being eaten up by Metro construction? Exhausted with detours forced by Delisle Bridge closure? Widen your patience, motorists, for the road is only getting narrower from here. The edges of the city's road overbridges (ROBs) supervised by the suburban railways, which are currently cantilevered footpaths, will be snipped and rebuilt on the motorable part of the bridge road, to give them them more stability. The move follows the collapse of a cantilevered fringe of Gokhale Bridge in Andheri on July 3, which claimed two lives.

The width of the road on bridges is, therefore, set to get smaller, as the pavements move in.

Western as well Central Railway officials said they would be shutting down the cantilevered portions of their respective overbridges soon for the reconstruction. While WR has identified seven ROBs where the footpaths extend out from the brink of the bridge unsupported, the Central Railway is yet to make the list public.

WR's seven RoBs are Kennedy and Carol bridges at Grant Road, Bellasis in Mumbai Central, Elphinstone Road-Parel bridge, Bandra (Mahim Causeway), Andheri's Gokhale Bridge and Vasai Road. Here, the footpaths are simply welded into the main girder, and not integrated into the overall structure. The road standing on the main girder is a lot sturdier.

The width of most of the ROBs is between 9 and 12 metre, with one or two lanes on either side. This includes 1.5-2-metre-wide footpaths. As it is, this is too slim a passage for the city's bloating traffic situation. Once the work begins, motorists would loose six to nine feet of the road. So in some cases, depending on the breadth of the bridge, a whole lane is likely to vanish completely.

On July 3, the footpath straddling the cantilevered portion of Gokhale Bridge caved in. It will be the first bridge to undergo the change, for which a blueprint has been prepared. Senior WR officials said that similar plans would be drawn for the remaining six ROBs.

"As of now, the footpaths have been laid on cantilever bridges, which have been found to be corroded. Over a period of time, after the shutdown, new footpaths will be made part of the road itself. There is no doubt it will result in narrower roads," said a WR official.

The WR has concluded an internal inspection of all of its 29 ROBs in Mumbai. This is apart from the ongoing detailed inspection carried out by the Railways, BMC, and IIT Bombay.

SPOTS OF BOTHER

ROBs on WR: 29 
Cantilevers on ROBs on WR: 7 

ROBs on CR: 87 
Cantilevers on CR: Data not released