Mumbai’s east-west road commute to get smoother, BMC looks to widen SV, link road

The K-West ward office of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) plans to demolish around 600 slums along SV Road and Link Road to make them wide

As work on extending the Bal Thackeray flyover — from Jogeshwari SV Road to Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Link Road (JVLR) — has been affected by the upcoming Metro lines, the civic body has come up with another plan to make the east-to-west commute smoother. The K-West ward office of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) plans to demolish around 600 slums along SV Road and Link Road to make them wider.

Civic officials said that this move will bring down travel time between Lokhandwala and the Western Express Highway (WEH) to about 15 minutes from the existing 30 minutes during peak hours (HT)

According to a source, the Khan Compound and Qureshi Compound in Jogeshwari will have to face the brunt as the process has already begun there, with local officials demolishing over 70 structures.

The civic officials said that this move will bring down travel time between Lokhandwala and the Western Express Highway (WEH) to about 15 minutes from the existing 30 minutes during peak hours. The civic body will develop a two-lane road on each side of the median measuring about 36.6m.

The local ward office aims at freeing the land of encroachment by the end of this year and hand over the open plot to BMC’s road department.

A senior civic official said, “We will rehabilitate the legal tenants of the slums. This will be an important work with the JVLR extension still on the drawing board owing to metro lines.”

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