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  Civic body to fix 40 dilapidated bridges

Civic body to fix 40 dilapidated bridges

AGE CORRESPONDENT
Published : Oct 23, 2016, 12:50 am IST
Updated : Oct 23, 2016, 12:50 am IST

Even as the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is in the process of creating an inventory of the status of all bridges in Mumbai, it has already declared about 40 bridges “extremely dilapidated.

The BMC has declared around 40 bridges across the city as “extremely dangerous”.
 The BMC has declared around 40 bridges across the city as “extremely dangerous”.

Even as the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is in the process of creating an inventory of the status of all bridges in Mumbai, it has already declared about 40 bridges “extremely dilapidated.”

It has excluded these bridges from the list originally prepared for auditing, and will begin reconstruction or repair work on them within three or four months.

The BMC originally planned to audit all the city bridges (314) and received permissions from the civic standing committee to hire consultants for the same. However, Sanjay Deshmukh, additional municipal commissioner, in-charge of the roads and bridges department, said, “We have given work orders for 274 bridges. Work on the audit of these bridges has already begun.”

S.O. Kori Chief Engineer of the bridges department said on Saturday, “We are not going to audit all 314 bridges. While conducting a primary inspection of all bridges we realised some of them are extremely dilapidated, and we do not need to go through the entire audit procedure to gauge their condition. We have excluded these from the list of bridges to be audited.”

Mr Kori said the entire process of creating an inventory of the bridges and then a structural audit of all of them will take over eight months. However, 40 bridges, which have been constructed during the British era need immediate repairs. Among the 40, 23 bridges are rail over bridges (ROBs) and 10 are foot over bridges (FOBs), including the bridges at Currey Road, Reay Road, Carnac Bunder and the one at Elphinstone Road.

The process of creating an inventory of the remaining 274 involves collecting every detail of the bridge such as when it was built, how strong is its foundation, when was the last time patchwork repair was conducted on it, and what per cent of the bridge needs to be repaired.

“This process will help us determine if the bridges are sound or in need of repair or reconstruction. It will take long and we don’t want to expend time auditing these 40 bridges which we know require repairs for sure,” said Mr Kori.