₹400cr project to widen Mumbai’s arterial LBS Marg gets a push

The 21-km road that runs through Mumbai’s central suburbs will be widened to three lanes and will be more pedestrian-friendly

The much-awaited widening of the 21-km-long Lal Bahadur Shastri Marg (LBS) will start soon.

The road is expected to become more pedestrian-friendly. (HT File)

With the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) recently issuing the work order, the Rs400-crore project has got a push.

One of the busiest roads in the city, the LBS Marg sees an average of one lakh vehicles daily as it is the crucial east-west connectivity.

The road widening project, which was in the planning stage for more than a decade, will involve rehabilitation of around 2,000 structures, mostly commercial.

A senior civic official, requesting anonymity, said, “The road will be widened to three lanes on both north and south-bound lanes. We have identified bottlenecks of 5kms on the road that will be cleared in the widening. We have prioritised the plan to give space to pedestrians.”

The LBS stretch, from Sion to Mulund, is heavily congested with vehicular traffic, more so because of the overcrowded railway stations nearby. As there is hardly any space for pedestrians, the road-widening plan will include building footpaths on the entire stretch.

The plan also includes increasing pedestrian refuge areas while crossing roads, continuous pedestrian crossing and traffic calming measures before the crossing and putting up signs for U-turns.

The World Resources Institute (WRI) had monitored a 9-km stretch of the 21-km road and proposed recommendations for constructions.

“Several arterial roads in the city are extremely narrow. We are focused on improving the efficiency of a road by widening it and allotting space for footpaths. We propose to extend the median divider up to the junction area, with a refuge point for pedestrians who are crossing the road,” said Dhaval Ashar, managing associate, Urban Transport and Road Safety at WRI.