Thirteen-km-stretch of Lal Bahadur Shastri Road to be widened, redesigned

A Thirteen-km stretch of the 21-km Lal Bahadur Shastri (LBS) Road is set to be transformed by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) under a global road safety initiative. The stretch, which witnesses maximum vehicular movement and congestion, will be refurbished and redesigned under the initiative.

Data by the Mumbai Traffic Police has revealed that pedestrians accounted for 52 per cent of the 490 fatal accidents in the city last year. A BMC official said the project for re-designing and extending the stretch from Mulund to Sion has been pending. It has been decided to incorporate the engineering designs proposed by experts under the Bloomberg Initiative for Global Road Safety (BIGRS). A senior official at the BMC said the new design will emphasise more on pedestrian safety. Thirteen other junctions in the city are also slated to be made more pedestrian friendly, the official added.

To ensure smoother movement of traffic, the existing carriageways will be redesigned, with every lane having a fixed width of 3.5 metres. The remaining road space will be allocated for footpath or pedestrian lanes. At present, the length varies due to encroachment and other factors. The width for footpaths will be allocated uniformly to ensure that two people can pass at the same time, leaving enough space for a differently-abled person, said the official.

Last year, five intersections or junctions — HP junction in Bandra, Bharatmata at Dadar, Wadala, Nagpada and Mith Chowki in Malad — underwent a temporary transformation under the BIGRS initiative. The BMC is planning to make the transformation permanent. “Whenever we take up an intersection, we ensure there are no major structural changes or lane reductions. Our focus is to ensure the safety of pedestrians while designing these roads. Before making designs, researchers count traffic volume and conduct pedestrian volume surveys,” said Vinod Chithore, chief engineer for roads and traffic. He added, “Every corner of the new 13-km stretch at LBS marg and 13 other junctions will have a properly designed footpath.”