Sonia Gandhi inaugurates India's first sea bridge
30 Jun 2009
UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi today declared open the country's first sea bridge that links Mumbai's western suburbs of Bandra and Worli.
Christened `Rajiv Gandhi Sea Link', the bridge will bypass 23 road signals and reduce travel time in the county's commercial capital by 80 per cent.
The Bandra-Worli sea link "will reduce travel time to barely six-eight minutes, said an official of the Maharashtra State Roads Development Corporation, adding, "It will also entail savings in vehicular operating costs of over Rs100 crore a year."
It currently takes 60 to 90 minutes to cover the distance of 8 km between Bandra and Worli during the morning-evening peak hours. The daily traffic volume is over 1.4 million vehicles.
The eight-lane, 5.6-km-long cable-supported bridge cost over Rs1,600 crore and took over 10 years to build. (See: Bandra-Worli Sea Link sets another landmark for Mumbai)