MMRDA will soon beautify city highways

Mumbai: The beautification and landscaping of the Western Express Highway (WEH) and Eastern Express Highway (EEH) will be taken up soon as the MMRDA has recently floated an Expression of Interest (EoI) regarding the same. The selected firm will be responsible for maintaining the spaces under monorail, metro 7 (Andheri east to Dahisar east) and metro 2A (D.N. Nagar to Dahisar). The selected firm will also be responsible for maintenance for five years.

According to the tenders, the authority wants a private firm to maintain the central medians, footpaths and traffic islands at the above mentioned sites. The MMRDA is already taking efforts to make the WEH signal-free, and is planning to construct more underpasses on the expressway for ease of traffic movement. At an event held Saturday under Project Mumbai, R.A. Rajeev, metropolitan commissioner announced the beautification project. “The contractor will be responsible for beautifying the sites for a period of five years. Thus, cases of potholes during the monsoon can also be tackled by the same contractor.”

The Asian Age had reported in its September 22nd edition that MMRDA was planning to develop the station areas of the monorail under the Stat-ion Area Development (SAD) project. SAD inclu-des construction of footpaths, removal of surrou-nding tents and provision of dividers on roads under the alignment of the mon-orail. Around `1 crore has been planned to be spent on each monorail station.

Meanwhile, junctions of the WEH are also proposed to be brought under modifications to make the carriageway signal-free.