Commuters travelling on SV Road in Andheri (west) had a harrowing time on Thursday as a crane used for launching girders for the Metro Rail construction got stuck at the narrow junction between SV Road and JP Road.
“One of the cranes of the Metro Rail broke down and partly blocked the busy SV Road. The situation was worse during the peak hours in the morning as commuters witnessed traffic snarls on the entire Andheri, Goregaon-Malad stretch,” Inderpal Singh, a shopkeeper on JP Road in Andheri, said.
According to officials, the snag developed in one of the crane’s sensors and not in the machine that was used to drive the vehicle. The crane developed a mechanical fault after it finished launching a girder in the night.
The problem was rectified only after 4 pm and the crane was moved away from the troubled location.
When a spokesperson of Reliance Infrastructure, the body constructing the Metro, was contacted, he said, “To cause the least inconvenience to public, we requested the traffic police to help ease the situation; they were very helpful in deploying additional personnel to control the traffic. We also deployed additional marshals to ensure better traffic movement.”
According to a commuter, Mitesh Goradia, although the traffic police was trying its best to divert traffic on alternate roads, “crossing the Andheri stretch took really long”.
The CM on Tuesday had announced that the 11.07 km-long Metro Rail between Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar would be ready by March 2013, a year after the scheduled date of completion.