13-km-long cycle lanes at BKC to be removed

The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) is going to widen internal roads of the Bandra-Kurla Complex by removing the much-criticised and failed 13-km-long bicycle lanes built on the side-ways of the internal roads.

“We had constructed a 13-km-long chain of cycle lanes at BKC and it seems that the project has not taken off according to the expectations and has mainly remained unused. Therefore, we plan to remove the cycle lanes, which will result in the roads getting widened. The volume of traffic is increasing with every other day and we cannot afford to have a cycle lane which no one uses and it will be better if there are no such demarcations kept anymore,” said a senior MMRDA official.

MMRDA spent nearly Rs 6.5 crore on developing these dedicated bicycle lanes that were inaugurated by then CM Prithviraj Chavan back in 2011. The plan was also criticised by the urban planners who termed the project as “failed” as there were no individuals riding bicycles in a commercial area like the BKC.

Besides, the lanes remained barely maintained by the MMRDA and it was a common sight to see some officer goers in BKC using the lanes for parking their vehicles.

“In between, an NGO had offered to maintain the cycle lanes and had also proposed providing a limited number of free cycles, but eventually the offer of the NGO did not turn into a concrete one,” added the senior MMRDA official.

According to MMRDA officials, the removing work will be carried out in the internal roads of BKC like that of G block, G-North Block and other blocks where the cycle lanes are present.

Out of the total 13-km cycle lanes nearly 3-4 km of the cycle lanes were already removed when the MMRDA carried out the installation of dedicated bus lanes on a 7-km stretch of the BKC.