The work on building India’s longest 11.80 km road tunnel linking Thane-Borivali — passing under the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) — will get underway in March 2022.
Announcing this here on Thursday, Maharashtra PWD Minister Eknath Gaikwad said: “We have completed the land acquisition for the project. We have received a detailed project. We will start the work on the project in March 2022 and complete it in 66 months”.
To be implemented by the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) project, the project will involve construction of 10.25 km double tunnel and 1.55 kms junction. It is slated to cost around Rs. 11,235-crore.
Apart from decongesting Thane’s busy Ghodbunder Road, the 6-lane twin tunnel (3-lanes in each direction) will enable vehicles to zip at 80-kmph and slash the travel time from the current 60-minutes to barely 15-minutes between Borivali on the Western Express Highway to Thane.
The twin-tunnel will run underneath the lush green SNGP for which the MSRDC is taking special precautions to avoid causing harm to the biodiversity in and around the national park.
Spread over 87 km area, SNGP is home to a number of endangered species of flora and fauna and harbours approximately 800 species of flowering plants, 45 species of mammals, 43 species of reptiles, 38 species of snakes, 12 species of amphibians, 300 species of birds, 150 species of butterflies.
