PM Modi to throw open today India’s longest sea-bridge | India News

MUMBAI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate Atal Setu, or Mumbai Trans Habour Link (MTHL), on Friday by travelling on the sea-bridge from INS Shikara in Colaba to Navi Mumbai. In Navi Mumbai, he will address a public meeting where he will dedicate three other infrastructure projects, and lay the foundation stone for one more. The 21.8km sea-bridge, the longest in the country, will be opened to commuters from Saturday.
The sea-bridge will, as of now, primarily help people travelling between south Mumbai and Navi Mumbai, cutting the journey short.Its real potential, though, will be unleashed once the Sewri-Worli elevated corridor, the Eastern Freeway-Marine Drive tunnel, the proposed Chirle-Palaspe connection with the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, and the international airport in Navi Mumbai are completed.

All these projects will make the Rs 21,200 crore Atal Setu accessible to people from a much wider geography. These projects will be completed in phases over five years and ensure that the western waterfront and the eastern waterfront of the island city are fully integrated with a web of tunnels and flyovers coming up in south Mumbai. In the first year, the one-way toll will be Rs 250 and Rs 375 for a round trip.
In the making since 2018, MTHL will also provide a shorter route to the Navi Mumbai International Airport, the much-needed second airport in the region, after the Navi Mumbai Coastal Road is completed. MTHL and the Navi Mumbai International Airport, scheduled to begin commercial operations in December, are expected to be the twin engines that will put the high-tech ‘Third Mumbai’, planned over 334 sq km, on an accelerated growth path.
Carved largely out of the originally 560 sq km NAINA, or Navi Mumbai Airport Influence Notified Area, Third Mumbai comprises the area in the MTHL influence zone and is planned as a residential, commercial and business node.
The NAINA project, which had the same ambitions as Third Mumbai, failed to take off in its decade of existence, but the promise of a 20-minute drive to Sewri in the city via MTHL, and access to the wider world that the upcoming airport and existing Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust will bring, besides an upcoming link road to the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, are all expected to make the Third Mumbai project a success. Railway and metro connectivity are also on the cards. The ripple effect is likely to breathe new life into NAINA too.