Sewage pipeline under Madame Cama road breaks, traffic stalled

Road partially blocked for repair work after officials found that a section of it had sunk when the pipe broke, leading to traffic snarls and accidents.

Just four days after a part of Peddar Road caved in, a section of Madame Cama Road in south Mumbai sank on Monday after a sewer line pipe beneath it broke. A cave-in was averted by civic staff, though the repair work badly affected traffic during evening peak hours.

HT Image

The road sank at a stretch between the National Gallery of Modern Art and the circle opposite Regal cinema that sees heavy traffic daily.

Civic officials rushed to the spot, digging up a 4.5-metre-long pit on the road to replace the underlying pipe. The repair work began at around 10am and went on till late in the evening.

There were several minor accidents on the road to Colaba because of the repair work. A BEST bus crashed into the footpath, uprooting the barricade and causing a traffic snarl.

Officials from the traffic department had advised motorists heading to Colaba to use Cooperage Road instead of Madame Cama Road.

“We realised this stretch on Madame Cama Road urgently needed repairs while surveying the condition of the roads in A-ward,” said an engineer at the spot, requesting anonymity.

The engineer added that though the pipe was not in use at the moment, it had to be replaced to maintain the evenness of the road above.

Motorists on the road complained that all vehicles had to drive through a narrow section left open for traffic. “The authorities should have diverted the buses to another route. As they had planned the work, they should have considered the traffic situation,” said motorist Sandeep Satke, who had to drive through the road.

The Hindustan Times had reported on Sunday that south Mumbai was at the risk of more road cave-ins such as the one that stalled traffic at Peddar Road on July 11.

This is because a project to overhaul the city’s colonial era drains, whose collapse leads to such cave-ins, has been underway since October 2010 but is at least three years away from completion.

Ravindra Kadam, deputy chief engineer (sewage operations) said, “We are still awaiting detailed reports from authorities on the spot to determine what led the pipe to break”.