Mumbai Motorists get relief from traffic nightmares – Kandivli Akurli subway becomes operational
Mumbai Motorists get relief from traffic nightmares – Kandivli Akurli subway becomes operational
With the widening work at Kandivali
having been completed after nearly two years, motorists using the Western Express Highway (WEH) can heave a huge sigh of relief from their traffic nightmares.
Barricades placed on the highway have been removed.
The completion of the Akurli Bridge is A Ganeshotsav Gift. Now Mumbaikars will have a Smooth drive.
Notedly, the barricades had reduced the north-bound carriageway of the highway to two lanes, instead of four, leading to a bottleneck for vehicles travelling from south Mumbai and Bandra to the western suburbs of Borivali and Dahisar. To ease the congestion, traffic police would open two additional lanes on the other side during peak traffic hours. This stop-gap solution would lead to traffic pileups on the south-bound carriageway, too, at Kandivali.
Infact, there were complaints from Motorists travelling towards Borivali that it took anywhere between 20 minutes to an hour, depending on the time of day, to cross the 1.5-2km stretch between Malad and Kandivali, with the Samata Nagar Police Station junction being the major issue.
The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) had begun work on widening the Akurli subway, which connects Kandivli station to the highway and Lokhandwala residential area.
As per MMRDA, the project work got delayed owing to an unexpected discovery of a gas pipeline on the Borivali side of the subway. The pipeline measuring 300mm in diameter, which serves areas from Dahisar to Bandra, had to be moved for the work to be completed.
Earlier this month, Piyush Goyal, Union minister and recently elected Mumbai North MP alongside MLA Atul Bhatkhalkar, MMRDA officials and local residents, had inspected the work site earlier this month.
On announcing the inauguration, Goyal Explained that today is a significant day not just for North Mumbai, but for the entire city. Since he started campaigning in North Mumbai, he observed the severe traffic issues on the Western Express Highway, with hours-long traffic jams on both sides…
Amidst the election period, he was deeply saddened to see this and ensured that in the first 100 days of the new government, amidst PM Modi’s third term, they would speed up the work and resolve this issue, providing relief to the people of Mumbai from the daily traffic chaos.
News Edit KV Raman
