The BMC has received bids from three companies for the construction of twin tunnels for its ambitious Goregaon Mulund Link Road(GMLR) project.
This is the fourth time that the BMC has floated the tender and has finally got lucky with bidders, namely Afcons Infrastructure, Larsen & Toubro and NCC Limited. The tender was first floated in October 2022, but owing to requests from bidders, it kept getting extensions.
A BMC official said this being a design and built contract, it took time to get the right kind of bidders. “It will take us over a month to finalise the bidders. The period for construction of the twin tunnels is estimated to be around four years as it involves complex works,” said the official. The BMC had aimed to start work from March 2023 onwards, however, it got delayed owing to extensions given to the tender.
It was in October 2022, that the BMC had floated tenders for construction of twin tunnels to go below Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) with a box tunnel in Film City, Goregaon. While the length of the twin tunnels is proposed to be 4.70km each, the cost of construction is estimated to be Rs 6,322 crore. The entire cost of the project is approximately Rs 8,000 crore.
Owing to the tunnel on the Nahur side of the project, about 711 structures are to be affected, of which about 51 structures are commercial. The said plot belongs to the state government. In addition, the forest department had earlier asked the BMC to accommodate about 100 PAPs in national park area in keeping with the conditions imposed for wildlife NOC.
It is very likely that the tunneling works for the project will be done using the Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) technology that is also being used for tunnelling of other ongoing underground projects in the city, such as Metro-3 corridor and Mumbai Coastal Road project.