A-bridged!

So its here finally! The much-awaited, cover-story-making, Bandra-Worli sea link, which will supposedly aid movement of traffic in India’s financial capital. An engineering marvel in itself and India’s first cable-stayed bridge to be built over open sea, the sea link spans a length of 5.6 km and is expected to provide relief to the much congested Mahim causeway, that suffers a bottleneck on a daily basis.

However, facts continue to bring around a lot of speculation concerning the nation’s infrastructure planning. What looks like it might stir up a hornet’s nest, is a bunch of figures that sideline the glorious achievement.

The sea link was to be done in an estimated budget of 600 crores, which is a clear less than half of the actual expenditure incurred. This has further questioned holistic town planning as to whether a construction project that absorbed 300% more than the capital alotted and took 5 more years to suggest completion is worth the 40 to seven minute cut. The above is again unlikely to happen by the way things figure out since it will end up causing traffic bunching at both ends, thereby not
saving urban commuters too much time.

The crux of the issue has unfortunately not been anticipated by those in charge. The viability of the project essentially forms the backbone around which such doubts circle. Renegotiated contracts, payment disputes, incompetence. Indian infrastructure planning ha a long long way to go.

In the news :

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Bandra-Worli-Sea-Link-Hi-tech-incompetence/articleshow/4723969.cms