40-minute leg down to 7 minutes — but two crucial arms still missing

After nine years of construction, the Bandra-Worli Sea Link will finally be thrown open by Congress president Sonia Gandhi here tomorrow. The first of its kind in the country, the 5.6-km link, conceived in the 1990s, promises to cut the 40-minute crawl from suburban Mumbai into downtown to a seven-minute ride.

Its two central towers that soar above the sea may have changed the city’s iconic skyline — but it’s a change fraught with a five-year delay, massive cost overruns and protracted disputes between the government and the contractors.

In fact, the sea link is itself only one segment of the Western Freeway Project, envisaging a garland of similar high-speed links along the city’s western coast, connecting the suburbs all the way to the tip of South Mumbai.

But the next arms, the 3.5-km Worli-Haji Ali Sea Link and some form of connectivity — its precise form as yet undecided — between Haji Ali and Nariman Point are crucial for the project’s impact to be felt across the choked city.

The Worli-Haji Ali link tendering got delayed owing to recession-hit contractors asking for repeated extensions to submit bids. The bids are now in and a decision on the contract is awaited. The Haji Ali-Nariman Point link is not even on the drawing board with the government mulling various options, including an ambitious proposal to build it as part sea link and part tunnel.

Work on the Bandra-Worli Sea Link could only begin seven months after the contract was awarded in 2000 to the Hindustan Construction Company thanks to much feet-dragging by the government in handing over the construction site.

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