Dinesh Kamath's news item 'Eastern Freeway to be inaugurated by CM on June 13 - this Freeway will benefit Navi Mumbaikars considerably' that was published in Newsband

Eastern Freeway to be inaugurated by CM on June 13

This Freeway will benefit Navi Mumbaikars considerably

By Dinesh Kamath

NAVI MUMBAI: Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan will at last inaugurate the Eastern Freeway which extends from Orange Gate to Chembur. The inauguration will take place on Thursday, 13 June 2013 at 3 pm near Orange Gate, MBPT Road, Mumbai.

Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) should be lauded for coming up with such a fantastic project. Our local bodies like Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) and City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) should derive inspiration from MMRDA and learn a thing of two from it. This freeway will benefit Navi Mumbaikars considerably as they will be in a position to reach CST in shortest time by using this freeway.

Mumbai’s Easter Freeway (16.8 km long) is described as the country’s longest within a city. A combination of road sections over, under and on level ground, the signal-free, toll-free freeway promises a straight ride from the eastern suburbs to south Mumbai in 25 minutes. Once Mumbai Trans Harbour Link from Sewri to Nhava and an elevated road from Worli to Sewri are in place, the MMRDA will connect these too to the freeway so that traffic can be contiguous between the south, the western and eastern suburbs and Navi Mumbai.

In 1983, the Central Road Research Institute had recommended a transport improvement plan in the growing city. Among various projects it recommended an eastern freeway. However, it was not looked at seriously until about 2003. MMRDA took up the project and now has completed it.

This freeway will have country’s first transport tunnels located within an urban sprawl. Nine metres high and 18 wide, they required 1200 tonnes of steel. For three years, more than 200 labourers worked on the tunnels, drilling and blasting through rock till the tunnel found the daylight. The MMRDA had to coordinate with more than 10 agencies, some for acquiring land, some for shifting underlying utilities, and some for general permission.                

Mumbai.

The Eastern Freeway was ready for over a week but it was not thrown open to traffic despite the nearing monsoon as the state government was not getting Congress leaders such as Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi to inaugurate it. The state government came under severe criticism from all quarters for delaying the opening of freeway to public. At last, to everyone’s relief, CM himself decided to inaugurate it.

Thus the salient features of Eastern Freeway are:

·        16.8 km long freeway from Orange Gate to Chembur

·         9.29 km elevated corridor: Second longest in urban setting in India

·        550-meter long twin tunnel: First-of-its-kind tunnel in urban India

·        Easy connectivity  from Southern Mumbai to Eastern suburbs

·        Travel time between Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus and Chembur reduced to 25 minutes.

·        Vehicle carrying capacity: More than 24,000 daily

·        A boon for thousands of commuters traveling from Island City towards Navi Mumbai, Pune and Goa.