L&T-MEIL joint venture wins Mumbai's Thane-Borivali tunnel project

The joint venture of Larsen & Toubro (L&T) and Megha Engineering & Infrastructures (MEIL) has been declared the lowest bidder for the construction of two civil packages for the Thane-Borivali twin tunnel project in Mumbai. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) had issued tenders for civil construction of the project, which is part of the Goregaon Mulund Link Road (GMLR), last year. The project aims to create an east-west corridor for traffic movement, connecting Mulund in the eastern suburbs with Goregaon in the western suburbs, as there is currently no direct connectivity between these areas.

The proposed project will have 10.8 km of twin tunnels and an additional km of approach roads on both ends, with three-lane tunnels connecting Magathane's Ekta Nagar in Borivali and Tikuji-NiWadi in Thane. The project involves constructing four giant tunnel boring machines (TBMs) at a maximum depth of 23 m below the surface. The tunnels will pass through the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP), which is the only national park in the world located within a metropolitan area. The travel time between Borivali and Thane is currently more than an hour, but the proposed 11.84 km-long tunnel project is expected to reduce the travel time to just around 15 minutes. The project is estimated to cost Rs 13,200 crore and is scheduled to be completed in five years.