Juhu Circle flyover will add to our traffic woes: local residents

MUMBAI: The ₹630-crore Juhu Circle flyover aims to ease traffic but locals fear it will create bottlenecks on approach roads and impact nearby trees.

MUMBAI: The ₹630-crore flyover offering a quick zip from C D Barfiwala Lane to the Juhu-Versova Link Road, gliding over Juhu Circle, is a bridge that fits right in with the BMC’s grand plan of connecting the high-speed corridors of the Mumbai Coastal Road. Local residents, however, argue that the flyover’s approach roads will create bottlenecks for those traversing the roads below.

Juhu Circle flyover will add to our traffic woes: local residents

A long time in the making, the Juhu Circle flyover has gone through many changes of plan. First floated in 2016 to reduce congestion at Juhu Circle, the flyover was meant to go along the pillars of the Metro 2B line at a lower level. But this was scrapped as it was found to be clunky and difficult.

After the next route—through Airports Authority of India land—was also abandoned in 2023 on account of height restrictions, the civic body went back to the original plan of going parallel with Metro 2B. One entry point of the flyover will now begin after Barfiwala Bridge ends near Juhu Galli, and the other one will be on the Juhu-Versova Link Road.

Milaan Vigraham, a resident of the area, said that the roads where the flyover was being built were three-lane roads, with a few encroachments on C D Barfiwala Lane. “Once the flyover is in the thick of construction, it will occupy two of them, leaving a measly one lane at the approaches for everyone who wants to go anywhere else at the junction,” he said. “The flyover is only catering to those who want to go from Juhu to Andheri West and WEH, but the junction meets vehicles travelling from Gulmohar Road, NS Road Number 10, and CES Marg. They will all still have to wait for the two signals and also have the flyover’s pillars to contend with.”

Vigraham also raised the concern that some trees along the Juhu-Versova Link Road would have to be axed to make space.

Along with architects and urban planners Alan Abraham and Nitin Killawala, the bunch tried to appeal to the BMC to choose an alternative when the work on the bridge was beginning in September-October 2024. “Why doesn’t the BMC work on reducing the signal time first, which would improve the congestion at the junction?” asked Vigraham. Abraham pointed out that the BMC needed to concentrate on the other roads earmarked in the Development Plan 2034, which will add alternatives to the traffic flocking to the circle. Due to scant support from the area’s residents, however, their fight fizzled out.

Mahindra Chawla, an architect who uses the road frequently and was part of a campaign that argued for the bridge, said the Juhu Circle junction was terrible. “The signals there are too long, and then they open for too short a time,” he said. “Bottlenecks are inevitable in a city so chock-full of traffic but possibly around 80% of the traffic that uses the junction uses it to go to the other suburbs. The locals form possibly 20% of the traffic, so the flyover will be a boon for most.”

An official from the BMC’s bridge department, however, said that traffic at the bottlenecks would not be an issue, as the flyover would divert much of the traffic going through Juhu Circle. “Commuters from Versova and Juhu will reach Andheri and then go on to Gokhale Bridge towards the WEH in 10 minutes flat, way down from the current 45 minutes,” he said. “The flyover will also have a link later to the Bandra-Versova Sea Link, so people coming from there can reach the WEH easily and quickly.”