Drive on sea link to get costlier by July

Come July, your ride on the Bandra Worli sea link will get costlier. The state government has proposed a 10% hike in the sea link toll, which means a one-way ride that currently costs Rs 50, will cost Rs 55.

Come July, your ride on the Bandra Worli sea link will get costlier. The state government has proposed a 10% hike in the sea link toll, which means a one-way ride that currently costs Rs 50, will cost Rs 55.

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The state government has proposed that while cars will have to shell out Rs 55 for a one-way trip, light commercial vehicles will have to pay Rs 85 and heavy commercial vehicles Rs 110. The toll for cars, LCVs and HCVs currently stands at Rs 50, Rs 75 and Rs 100 respectively.

The hike in toll will, however, be enforced only when Reliance Infrastructure buys the bridge from the government. A consortium of Reliance Infrastruct- ure and Hyundai has bagged the contract for constructing the Worli-Haji Ali sea link. The contract also gives them the right to charge toll on the sea link.

However, Reliance has still not handed over the Rs 1,634-crore to the state government for the sea link.

“The toll rates will be reviewed when the new consortium takes over,” MSRDC superintending engineer AV Deodhar said. Toll rates will now be increased every three years in April based on the wholesale price index of that period.

The wholesale price index is the price of a representative basket of wholesale goods. It is used by governments as a central measure of inflation and is used to deduce prices of commodities and toll controlled by the state.