MMRDA performs U-turn, cites manpower, fund crunch

Reversing its previous position, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) has taken a U-turn, by putting the proposal of Eastern Freeway and Wadala-Thane Metro-4 corridor on the backburner citing insufficient funds and lack of manpower.

Though MMRDA’s budgetary allocation for the financial year 2016-17 has been designed to be city’s infrastructure-centric, MMRDA has put various infrastructure proposals in cold-storage.

MMRDA had planned to extend the Wadala-Thane Metro-4 corridor up to CST and the Dahisar east- Andheri east Metro-7 corridor up to the airport. However, the body has decided not to take up any extensions for the metro corridors for now to concentrate on the alignments of the initial plans. “There is not enough funds and manpower with MMRDA to carry out the plans of extension and so we have decided to only concentrate on alignments according to the initial plans,” an MMRDA official said. MMRDA had in 2014 while inaugurating the Freeway had announced an extension of 1.4-km on the south end which is an extension from P’ Dmello Road up to Fort and on the north end from the existing Ghatkopar-Mankhurd Link Road to the Eastern Express Highway.

“In a meeting between CM Devendra Fadnavis and railway minister Suresh Prabhu on Thursday the MMRDA made it clear we are not going to initiate the project of extending the proposal for extending the Freeway any time soon. There are various reasons like the project clashing with the project of railways and also going beyond P’Dmello Road means obstructions by the heritage buildings for which securing permissions from the heritage committee would be a task,” said a senior MMRDA official.

MMRDA had also carried out a study for extending the Freeway, which had concluded both the northern and southern extensions are feasible. However, according to officials, on the north there are certain obstacles from the forest department due to the area having covers of mangrove and on the south extension there are railways and heritage buildings.