Bandra-Worli Sea Link: Second cabled bridge work from April

After the gigantic cable-stayed bridges on the 4.7km-long Bandra-Worli Sea Link, the city is set to have yet another huge cable-stayed structure, this time on the first metro corridor.

The Mumbai Metro One Pvt Ltd (MMOPL) will start pulling up the cables for its mammoth bridge running over the Jog flyover on the Western Express Highway beginning April.

“We have already achieved a significant amount of work on the cable stayed bridge which will cross over the express highway.
The actual pulling of the cables will start somewhere in the third week of April. The design of the bridge is more or less similar to that of the Worli-end twin cable-stayed bridges of the Bandra Worli Sea Link.

However, this will be more challenging since we will be pulling the cables without much disturbance to the vehicular traffic flowing below the bridge,” MMOPL director KP Maheshwari told DNA. He further added that the bridge will cover a central span of 86 metres and the two side spans will be approximately 43 metres each.

“While the Bandra-Worli Sea Link cables were imported from China, our cables have been imported from Sweden and Switzerland,” said Maheshwari.

The metro cable stayed will be a huge structure with the maximum height of the base of the cable stayed reaching as high as 39 metres. This structure will be immediately after the Western Express Highway metro station, which is almost ready.

“WEH has been a major engineering challenge for us. Moreover, time and space constrains at the Andheri station bridge makes it difficult to use conventional methods of construction. Due to the complex network of underground utilities and space and traffic constraints, there have been various designs changes which have affected the progress of the project,” informed Maheshwari.

However, he added that all the problems related to the two bridges have been sorted out now, and construction activity is going on in full swing.