Soon, you can cycle or jog on new Mumbai track, one of India’s longest

The track will also have a Bollywood walk, biodiversity corridor and Mumbai books route

On Saturday, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis gave his nod to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s plan to build a cycling and jogging track along the Tansa pipeline. The 39-km-long track is expected to be one of the longest in the country and will stretch from suburban Mulund to Antop Hill in Wadala.

The initiative is meant curb to encroachments and give citizens an environment friendly transportation method. (Photo: CMOMAHARASHTRA/TWITTER)

The project will cost Rs300 crore and is expected to be opened to citizens by 2019.

Work will be undertaken in phases as encroachments along the pipeline must be removed. In an earlier survey, the BMC had identified more than 15,000 structures along the pipelineThe civic body aims to start Phase 1 along a 4 km to 5 km stretch by October.

The BMC has started constructing a compound wall in the suburbs along the British-era pipelines that bring water to Mumbai from Thane. The 39-km long Tansa water pipeline is divided into two parts — from Mulund to Dharavi and from Ghatkopar to Sion.

The track will create the shortest route connecting the eastern suburbs and parts of central Mumbai such as Sion and Wadala. “All encroachments along water pipelines in Mumbai will be cleared to create a 10-m-wide corridor on both sides,”said the chief minister’s office’s Twitter handle.

“We aim to give citizens a new transport corridor. It will have parking spaces and resting points. We plan to lauch each phase every six months,” said civic chief Ajoy Mehta.

The state government also plans to implement cycling tracks along the arterial roads of 10 leading cities in Maharashtra. It has decided to launch a pilot project in these cities and later extend it across the state, based on the response.

The state public works department will test the project, dubbed ‘streets with cycle tracks’ in Pune, Nagpur, Nashik, Amravati, Chandrapur, Kolhapur, Solapur, Latur, Aurangabad and Jalgaon, on roads under its jurisdiction.