Planned in 1997, completed in 2025: Vikhroli ROB in Mumbai to be opened for traffic from today
Mumbai's Vikhroli Railway Over Bridge (ROB) is set to become operational on Saturday, June 14, for vehicular movement, 28 years after its conceptualisation. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has maintained that no inauguration ceremony will be hel,d considering the ongoing monsoon season and the bridge will be opened for traffic straightaway from 4 pm.
The idea of constructing the bridge was first mooted in 1997 and was subsequently included in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's (BMC) Development Plan (DP) model.
The primary goal of the project is to ease the east-west connectivity at Vikhroli – one of the growing population hubs during the 1990s and now a prominent residential zone in the eastern suburbs. However, the project got delayed multiple times owing to several challenges like land acquisition and clearing encroachments. It took nearly 28 years for the BMC to finish the construction of the 615-meter-long bridge.
Even though the project was conceptualised in the late 1990s, work orders were issued only 21 years later, in 2018. According to civic officials, one of the primary reasons for the delay was the planning of the site.
'The bridge passes above the railway tracks of Mumbai, so initially we had to seek NOC for constructing the bridge. This took many years as initially the alignment of the structure, the blueprint had to be approved,' the official explained.
'In Mumbai, most of the existing ROBs were built during the 19th and 20th centuries. This was one of the recent projects that were taken up, and over time, many new guidelines came up for example, the height of the bridges should be increased to allow more headspace for the trains passing from below. These kinds of amendments in the rules allowed us to change the plan multiple times before we could go ahead with the tendering process,' the officer said.
After issuing the work orders in 2018, the BMC set a two-year deadline to finish the bridge by 2020. However, the authorities failed to meet the deadline owing to the presence of multiple encroachments on the plot where the bridge was being constructed, and the deadline was later postponed to 2022. Meanwhile, the project got delayed further, and in 2023, the final decision was taken to finish the work by the middle of 2025. The initial cost of the project at the time of issuing the work order stood at Rs 70 crore. However, owing to multiple delays, the cost now stands at Rs 180 crore.
'Last year, we decided that the bridge would be opened in its entirety instead of opening it in a phased manner. After we secured permissions for removing the trees and encroachments that were obstructing the bridge's alignment, we decided to ramp up the work and I instructed my team to finish the work before monsoon 2025 intensifies,' Abhijit Bangar, Additional Municipal Commissioner (Projects), told The Indian Express.
'The bridge was ready by May 31. However, considering it's a new bridge that was built from scratch, the Mumbai Traffic Police had some inputs with regards to the surface of the roads which we had to implement and follow before we went ahead with the final load test. These factors took us an additional two weeks to open the bridge,' Bangar said.
The Vikhroli bridge will connect the Eastern Express Highway in the east with Lal Bahadur Shastri (LBS) Marg in the west of Vikhroli in Mumbai's eastern suburbs. To date, there is no direct east-west link in Vikhroli and residents have to either take the ROB from Ghatkopar or Kanjurmarg for their journey. The flyover will also provide pedestrians with direct access to the platforms. Once operational, the bridge will, therefore, bring down the commute time to seven minutes instead of the current 25-30 minutes or even more, depending on the traffic.
This bridge will be India's longest structure having an open-web-girder (OWG) system that will run above railway tracks. The total length of the bridge is 615 metres, 12 meters wide, and is made of stainless steel with four vehicular lanes. The weight of each girder is around 1,100 metric tonnes. Alongside these, the bridge will also have footpaths for pedestrian movement.
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