The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) has invited tenders for extending the Santa Cruz Chembur Link Road (SCLR) by connecting the LBS Marg, Kurla with Vakola on the Western Express Highway (WEH).
A three-kilometre elevated two-lane extension will be constructed for the same, which will start at Kapadia Nagar in Kurla and will end at Vakola junction on the WEH.
Effectively this will mean that in the future one can take the SCLR from Vakola junction to travel right up to Kurla. The Rs 415-crore project will help decongest traffic at the Vakola junction and also help the airport-bound traffic to reach Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) within minutes by using the extended SCLR. It will also allow the airport-bound traffic to use the elevated road, which will in a way decongest traffic on the CST road in Kurla. The MMRDA also plans to have several ramps for entering and exiting the 3-km elevated roads at various spots.
Currently, to enter BKC one needs to travel via CST road in Kurla and WEH at the Kalanagar junction.
According to MMRDA officials with every passing day, traffic at BKC is continuously increasing and also with the increase in the number of multinational companies coming up, the traffic flow of employees was increasing. Furthermore, the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) is expected to aggravate the traffic at BKC. “The extension is also to ensure smooth traffic flow towards the commercial hub. The project will take three to four years to be completed considering the difficulties faced in implementing any green-field project in a city like Mumbai and the contract for the same will be awarded by August 2016,” said a MMRDA official.
The SCLR was opened to the public in April 2014, to provide east and west connectivity and cut travel time between Santa Cruz and Chembur to 30 minutes. It was part of the Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP), which was funded by the World Bank. The SCLR missed 11 deadlines and the work was started in 2003 and was supposed to be completed in 2008. However, only before the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, it was thrown open to the general public.