The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) on Wednesday invited tenders for two more metro railway projects — the DN Nagar to Mankhurd Metro 2B and the Wadala to Kasarvadavali Metro 4 corridors. The biggest relief for the MMRDA is that one of the most vexed issues — the height of the metro bridge over Central Railway's Kurla and Lokmanya Tilak Terminus — has been solved.
The earlier avatar of the metro corridor towards Mankhurd, at the time called the Charkop-Bandra-Mankhurd metro line, had taken a severe hit after Central Railway authorities gave MMRDA a height band of 22 metres for the metro bridge over Kurla. At that height, officials had then said, the metro station would have been too high operationally as well as a problem when it came to easy evacuation of commuters in case of an emergency.
The 22-metre height band was at the time given to MMRDA because the railways had kept the lower height bands for its elevated rail corridors, namely the CST-Panvel high-speed line and the still-to-be-approved CST-Kalyan elevated corridor.
The issue has now been solved, MMRDA Additional Commissioner and Project Director Pravin Darade said on Wednesday. "We had several meetings with the railways as well as the Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation (MRVC).
We will now be constructing the metro bridge over Kurla tracks at a height of 13 metres. The CST-Panvel elevated corridor will now run at a height of 22 metres," Darde said.
The tenders invited on Wednesday has the 23.5-kilometre-long DN Nagar to Mankhurd Metro 2B corridor, costing Rs10,986 crore in five packages. These five packages are ESIC Nagar to Khira Nagar, Saraswat Nagar to ILFS in BKC, MTNL Metro to Chembur, Diamond Garden to Mandale (Depot) and one package dedicated to the design and construction of elevated viaducts for railway crossings near Kurla and Lokmanya Tilak Terminus on CR.
The tenders to design and construct elevated viaduct and stations on the 32-kilometre Wadala to Kasarvadavali (Rs14,549 crore) have also been broken into five packages, said MMRDA. The five packages are Wadala to Amar Mahal Junction, Garodia Nagar to Surya Nagar, Gandhi Nagar to Sonapur, Mulund Fire Station to Majiwada and Kapurbawdi to Kasarvadavli.
