Even as the MMRDA has been claiming for the last two monsoons that it will soon finish work on the Milan Subway rail overbridge, it seems to have given up on meeting the moving deadline, due to delay of permissions from the Railways.
“We cannot say when the Milan Subway ROB will be ready; the Railways has come up with a new demand which will add more time in the completion of the project,” said a senior MMRDA official.
The approaches on both the ends of the bridge are almost ready, but the major work left is the launching of girders over railways tracks.
Earlier, the MMRDA had received permission from the Railways to launch an iron girder instead of the usual cement concrete ones. Later, it was demanded that anti-rust galvanising compound should also be applied, delaying it fur ther.
The Western Railway now wants the MMRDA to have a temporary support pillar in between the tracks when the girder is being launched.
“This will only delay the project. To have such a pillar, we will have to shift the utilities that are there beneath, and also approach the commissioner of railway safety for another round of permission,” said the MMRDA official.
As per the original deadline, the project was to be completed by mid-2009 but it kept getting delayed. The work on the project began in January 2008.