Mumbai traffic woes: Amar Mahal bridge beyond repair, to be rebuilt
Every year, Mumbaikars wrestle with traffic jams during monsoon. This season, congestion levels may worsen, specially for northbound traffic moving along the Eastern Expressway.
A technical committee appointed by the government to look into the causes for the damages to the Thane-bound arm of the Amar Mahal junction flyover near Chembur has said that the damaged portion of the bridge was beyond repair and must be rebuilt.
The damaged portion of the bridge was first closed for traffic on April 6, after one of its joints was found to have slipped. This severely crippled traffic movement, since the bridge is among the busiest in Mumbai. The government’s hopes for a quickfix solution to the crisis were dashed after a subsequent inspection revealed damages to another joint, which then prompted the government to set up a panel headed by Dr Ravi Sinha, who is a professor of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.
The committee has noticed “stress” on some more spots along the damaged stretch. “The committee has advised reconstruction of the damaged portion,” informed Chandrakant Patil, Minister, Public Works, on Monday. Claiming the government had decided to accept the committee’s suggestion, Patil further said that the rebuilding the damaged portion would take four months. Traffic will remain diverted during the period.
Also while the stretch requiring rebuilding is just about 200 feet long, senior state officials conceded that the traffic movement in and out of the bridge will be impacted.
What has compounded problems for the government is that the technology used for building the bridge is not easily available. The bridge was built in 1995 using the Quadricon modular bridge system which involves use of standardised prefabricated steel spans and components. “The firm that helped build the bridge has shut operations,” said Patil. While the norm has been to use pre-stressed concrete spans for bridge building work, the government of the time had experimented with steel trusses and spans to save \construction time for the busy bridge, said PL Bongirwar, a retired government bridge design expert, who is also being consulted for the restoration work.
The government and its technical panel has so far been unable to pinpoint the precise cause for the damage. “We do not know yet. We’ll wait for the committee’s report,” said Patil. Bongirwar said, “Traffic loads on the bridge could have been a factor.” Questions on why annual audits carried out by the Public Works department for bridges had failed to report the damage remained unanswered. “We’ll try and see if there had been some mistake,” said Ashish Kumar Singh, Principal Secretary, Public Works.
U-turn on toll tax?
While the BJP had run an election campaign in the 2014 assembly polls promising closure of toll nakas across the state, Patil appeared to be taking a U-turn on the issue. “Considering the state’s (delicate) financial position, we are studying whether toll abolition would further burden the exchequer,” he said.
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