Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) bridge department has proposed a 1500-metre long bridge connecting the Western Express Highway to decongest the Mahim Causeway junction, which sees a huge amount of traffic every day, especially during peak hours. A senior civic officer remarked that currently, the civic officers are ready with the plan and are conducting a feasibility study.
At present, there are three different roads, namely Lady Jamshedjee (L J) Road, Cadell Road, and Senapati Bapat Marg, connecting Mahim Causeway, which is creating a bottleneck, especially during office hours. “The proposed bridge would start from the Senapati Bapat Marg dead end road parallelly taking the Mahim railway track route and eventually connect the Bandra Reclamation bridge paving the way for four wheelers and motorist to take a direct route to the Western Express Highway. It would help to decongest the present bottleneck from where around 20 lakh vehicles pass every day. It would come down by 50 per cent,” said Ramakant Biradkar Assistant Municipal Commissioner (AMC) of Mahim ward.
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The new proposed bridge would be constructed 50 per cent on road by removing the hutments, while remaining half would make its way over the Mahim creek. “As the bridge partially has to made over river water, permission from Ministry of Environment and others would be required,” added AMC Biradkar.
Mahim Causeway is a vital route connecting suburban Mumbai to the city and it is used by a large number of Mumbaikars since there is no toll taken, unlike the Worli Sealink route. The history of Mahim Causeway road construction states that Lady Jeejeebhoy, wife of the first baronet Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy donated the entire amount of Rs.1,57,000 on the condition that the government would not charge toll for its use or disturb the Koli community who lived around the area during the British era.
