In what comes as a huge relief to the citizens of the Maximum City, the flyover connecting Bandra Kurla Complex to Chunabhatti in Sion will likely be inaugurated in November.
Both Sion area and BKC are known for the worst traffic snarls in the city. To cover barely 5 km on the Sion-Dharavi Link Road, it takes commuters around 45 minutes during peak traffic hours. Noise pollution from honking and vehicular pollution from emissions assist the long pauses while en route to BKC.
However, all this is expected to become a thing of the past soon, as the BKC Chunabhatti elevated connector is set to reduce travel time drastically. More than Rs 200 crore has been spent on this engineering marvel that will reportedly cut travel time by more than 30 minutes and distance by more than 3 km.
According to a Mumbai Mirror report, commute from Sion to BKC will take barely five minutes once the flyover is opened to the public.
If one takes the 1.6 km elevated connector, it will take them only a few minutes to reach the MMRDA building at BKC from Somaiya Ground off Eastern Express Highway. To reach the same distance from the same starting point, a person taking the 5.5 km Sion-Dharavi Link Road, would need at least half an hour.
The report further mentions that the connector is broad enough, so bottlenecks might not be a concern for the commuters, although the access points to the elevated road are narrow and dingy.
The other reason why travelling by the elevated connector would be smooth will be the fact that there are no signals along the way, whereas the Sion-Dharavi stretch is riddled with traffic signals.
The project was launched by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) in 2015, and has missed several deadlines since, owing to multiple impediments.
Earlier, there were talks that it would be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he visits the city in September. However, that had to be pushed when intermittent rains delayed the rod surfacing work.
It is expected that once the election results are out, the newly-formed government would formally and ceremonially throw the flyover open for public use.
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