Mumbai: The proposed Bus Rapid Transport System (BRTS) on the Western Express Highway may not be implemented any time soon as an elevated Andheri-Dahisar Metro line is being planned along the same route. The state government is also weighing a move to turn the underground Metro-II (Dahisar-Charkop-Bandra-Mankhurd) project into an elevated corridor.
The Andheri-Dahisar Metro corridor, which is around 18km long, is estimated to cost at Rs 10,800 crore. The project came up for discussion in the `war room' meeting called by chief minister Devendra Fadnavis last week, to take stock of infrastructure projects in the city . An official said, “We will have to upgrade the detailed project report, which will take a few months. We will then have to go before the government for the final approval.“
The Andheri-Dahisar corridor, referred to as Metro line VII, is planned along the Western Express highway but the exact alignment is yet to be worked out.MMRDA commissioner U P S Madan said, “The BRTS project has been kept on hold till a final decision on the Metro is taken.“
In May 2003, MMRDA had appointed Ms Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, Tata Consultancy Services and Indian Institute of Technology Powai, to prepare a master plan for the Mumbai Metro and a detailed project report for priority corridors. The master plan includes nine corridors covering 146.5 km, of which 32.5 km was proposed as underground and rest was an elevated route. It was approved by MMRDA in 2004.
A senior MMRDA official said, “The state government now plans to shelve the underground option in favour of elevated corridors. It will be difficult to fix an alignment for BRTS unless a final call is taken on the Metro.“
MMRDA had planned a three-lane elevated BRTS corridor as it was not possible to segregate lanes at ground level on WEH. It would have also led to mixing of traffic, thus affecting the smooth flow of vehicles.
Last month, the MMRDA issued advertisements seeking to appoint consultants for the elevated BRTS project on the highway between Bandra and Dahisar, a stretch which takes almost one and-a-half hours to cross. On Friday , it issued a notice to scrap the process of appointing the consultants who had been tasked to fix the alignment, identify bus stop locations and suggest technology to run this system. Interestingly , MMRDA, before inviting tenders for consultants, had factored that the elevated BRTS will have to factor in the height at which the Versova-AndheriGhatkopar Metro corridor crosses the WEH.
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