Mumbai infrastructure: Residents object to flyover bypassing Juhu circle

Mumbai: The four-lane flyover from CD Barfiwala Road to Juhu Versova Link Road, work on which commenced last month after deliberations for over two years, will add to traffic congestion and destroy the ambience of the area, according to a section of residents and urban planners.
Though the 1.6-km flyover is expected to help commuters bypass the busy Juhu Circle and decrease the travel time from Versova to Western Express Highway (WEH) during peak hours from 45 minutes to 10 minutes, it will actually restrict motorists between Juhu and Versova to one lane and lead to more traffic snarls in the area, the residents and urban planners said in a letter to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) commissioner and other officials in August. Having received no response to the letter, they plan to write to the BMC again on Friday as well as confer with the would-be legislator of the Andheri West constituency.
Milaan Vigraham, one of the signatories to the letter who also made an Instagram reel on the issue, said the entry to the flyover on Juhu Versova Link Road, which is already congested at peak times, will occupy two out of three lanes on the road, squeezing the Juhu-bound traffic to just one lane. “This will worsen traffic at the junction, not improve it,” said Vigraham. Similar concerns were raised by urban planners and architects Alan Abraham and Nitin Killawala and activist Zoru Bhatena, all co-signatories to the letter.
“As per the original plan for the flyover, it was to be integrated with the metro 2B corridor at a lower height before being diverted to Juhu Circle,” said Vigraham, who sourced the information through a right to information application. The plan was scrapped in 2018 after the technical committee appointed to examine it said the design was faulty and the piers of the flyover would make the junction clumsy. A two-level structure with a road at the lower level and a metro line on the higher level would also pose difficulties during construction and to the visual clutter, the committee found.
Subsequently, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) suggested that the flyover be diverted through land owned by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). But permission to build a flyover through the plot was refused owing to height restrictions, following which the BMC went back to the original plan, said Vigraham.
An official from BMC’s bridges department, who spoke to HT on condition of anonymity as he is not authorised to talk to the media, countered the residents’ and urban planners’ concerns, saying the flyover will allow motorists to bypass Juhu Circle and reduce load on the junction.
“The flyover is also part of a grand plan for seamless connectivity with the (under-construction) Bandra Versova Sea Link (BVSL). When vehicles come down from the sea link to Juhu Versova Link Road, they can take the new flyover and zip to WEH through Barfiwala flyover and Gokhale bridge,” the official said.
Vigraham and others questioned the logic, saying if someone travelling on the sea link wanted to reach Andheri, they would take the WEH at the end of the Bandra Worli Sea link and not continue onto the Bandra Versova Sea Link and then take two flyovers to reach the destination.
“The BMC’s approach to planning the flyover is faulty. The development plan has plenty of provisions to open up roads that would ease the traffic at low cost. But the BMC went out of their way to ignore the development plan and go back to the proposal they had found fault with earlier,” he said.