After years of existing just on paper, the Mumbai-Pune Expressway Augmentation plan has been revived. The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) floated international bids for the project earlier this week.
The project involves construction of four elevated (set of two each) roads, upgrading part of the existing expressway, and four tunnels bypassing Khandala and Lonavla hill stations.
“Approximate cost of the project stands at Rs5,385 crore. Tenders have been floated for appointing a Project Management Consultant and Request For Qualification for construction,” said a state official.
MSRDC had floated bids in October, but recalled the tenders within a few weeks and made changes to the capacity augmentation project. Now, a new Detailed Project Report (DPR) has been finalised with alterations to the earlier construction plan.
As per the earlier plan, one set of twin tunnels were to be of 1.620 km and another set 7.765 km long. Now, the tunnels have been redesigned to be 1.75 km (between Khopoli Toll Plaza and towards Khandala) and 8.92 km (between Khandala and Kusgaon/Sinhagad Institute). Once ready, motorists will be able to reach their destination faster as it will cut down their drive on the hilly terrain and also cut short commute on the Expressway by 6 km.
Although the project completion time-frame has been set at three years, the environment approval is yet to come in. As the project criss-crosses forest land, a proposal will be put up for “forest diversion”. It is only after the mandatory clearances that ground work can commence.
“The project will be implemented on Engineering, Procurement and Construction basis, which means MSRDC will bear the cost of the project and levy a toll on motorists, once ready,” added a state official. It will take three months for processing the bids and finalising the agency.
The need for capacity augmentation has arisen due to increasing vehicular congestion on the Expressway. When the expressway was completed, the ‘Level of Service’ on it was at ‘A’ and ‘B’. But in just over a decade it has reached to an unacceptable level of ‘F’, which is above 6,000 Passenger Car Unit.
In the future, additional road traffic is expected from Dighi Port which is 50 km away from the expressway.
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