Mumbai to get country’s longest bridge

Shiv Kumar

Tribune News Service

Mumbai, December 7

Mumbai is all set to get India’s longest cable-stayed bridge over the sea between Sewri in the city and Nhava in Navi Mumbai with the project getting the green signal from the state forest department.

Sources said work on construction of the Mumbai Trans-Harbour Link, as the project is called, will begin sometime in 2016 and is to be completed in late 2019. “It will be a 16.5 km long cable-stayed bridge built over the sea,” a state government official said. Around 5.5 km of the bridge will be on land on both ends.

The project is expected to cost Rs11,000 crore, 70 per cent of which will be funded by the Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA).

The remaining funds would be provided by City Industrial Development Corporation, Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust and the Mumbai Port Trust, sources said.

Officials say work on the six-lane MTHL has to be speeded up so that it is completed in time to be linked to the Navi Mumbai airport, which too is scheduled for completion in 2019.

Sources said JICA is carrying out its own environment impact assessment before okaying funding for the project. The government will soon begin the process of acquiring 100 hectares of land near the JNPT port.

Officials say a compensation package similar to that offered to villagers whose land was acquired for the Navi Mumbai airport is on the anvil. Apart from cash, villagers will be given a share of the developed land, sources said.

The project mooted in the 1970s was stuck due to environmental considerations since the bridge falls on the Sewri mudflats where thousands of flamingos come every year during winter.