After the end of the pandemic, the coastal road project has now gained pace with the first phase of tunneling work completed. Mavala, a giant tunnel boring machine which is being used for the project has excavated 357 metre tunnel within two months.
The BMC has come up with the project to ease traffic woes of the city. Under the 10.58 km long project that starts from Princess Street at Marine Drive to Worli end of Bandra-Worli Sea Link, twin tunnels, each having length of 2.07 km, are being constructed from Priyadarshini Park to Girgaon Chowpatty.
The first tunnel from Priyadarshini Park to Girgaon Chowpatty was completed in on January 10th this year. Thereafter, the second phase of excavation was started on March 30.
Under the second phase, Mavala has excavated 357 metre till the first week of June. Additional municipal commissioner, Ashwini Bhide, tweeted, “2nd tunnel of Mumbai Coastal Road Project is in progress. TBM Mavla was relaunched on March 30 in a record time after completing the first tunnel of 2 kms with tunnel breakthrough on January 10. It has now achieved 357 metres of length of the 2nd tunnel.”
Officials hope that the boring of second tunnel will be completed by January 2023. The height of the 'Mavala' machine is up to four-story building and it weighs 2,800 tonnes.
The diameter of the machine is 12.19 metres. For the first time in India, such a giant machine is used for tunnel excavation.
