Cracks appear in Mumbai's Grant Road station bridge: Police diverts traffic towards Kennedy Bridge, says police

A bridge at Mumbai’s Grant Road railway station has cracked. The area has been closed off by the police and traffic has now been diverted to Nana Chowk towards Kennedy Bridge, tweeted the Mumbai Police. The cracks were found on the Frere bridge at Grant Road station around 11.30 pm yesterday following which the traffic was diverted, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said. Images on Twitter (not independently verified by Firstpost), posted since late on Tuesday night, showed a huge crack running down the middle of the bridge.

@nitin_gadkari @ShelarAshish @MPLodha @MCGM_BMC @CPMumbaiPolice @mtptraffic @road
Grant Road Bridge develops huge cracks, watch out people. pic.twitter.com/cLkosIxqMX

— Atit Randeria (Modi ka Parivar) (@RanderiaAtit) July 3, 2018

Engineers of the BMC’s bridges department and other agencies have been asked to monitor and assess the condition of the Frere bridge, an official in the civic body’s disaster management unit said. On Tuesday, an over-bridge at a railway station in Mumbai’s Andheri suburb collapsed during heavy rains, massively disrupting train services, injuring five people and putting the spotlight once again on the creaky infrastructure of this metropolis. Only nine months ago, in September, a stampede on a foot-over-bridge linking Elphinstone Road and Parel suburban railway stations killed 22 people and injured many. Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said that during the next six months, a joint safety audit will be conducted by the railways, the BMC and the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay on the 445 road over-bridges, foot over bridges and bridges over pipelines in Mumbai as part of efforts to improve safety for commuters. Another senior official said a structural audit of all foot and road-over-bridges, including the one that collapsed on Tuesday, is underway. The BMC today said the structural audit of 274 bridges was underway and a final action plan for repairs, maintenance and rreconstructionwill be prepared within a week. “Our department is carrying out the structural audit of 274 bridges since the last year and the work is in final stages. We hope to prepare a final list soon of bridges under various categories - in good condition, requiring minor repairs, major repairs or requiring reconstruction,” BMC’s chief engineer (bridges) Shitlaprasad Kori told PTI. The good bridges would be the ones that do not require any immediate repairs, he said. The minor repairs of bridges would include fixing tiles and leakages, while the ones having structural flaws will require major repairs or maintenance, Kori said. Under the fourth category, the bridges which are in a dilapidated condition will be demolished and new ones will be constructed, he said. Of these 274 bridges, 137 are located in the western suburbs, 60 in the eastern suburbs and 77 in the main city. Kori said the Gokhale over-bridge that collapsed yesterday was constructed and owned by the BMC, but it was the Western Railway’s responsibility to maintain it. “Not only for this bridge, we have paid bills of the Western Railway (WR) and the Central Railway (CR) for the maintenance of bridges falling in their territory,” he said. “In the last four years, we have paid Rs 92.51 crore to CR and Rs 11.25 crore to WR after they submitted the estimated costs for the reconstruction and maintenance of various infrastructure owned by us and located on their premises,” he further said. Kori denied WR’s claims that the optic fibre cable, sanctioned by the BMC, may have led to the corrosion and collapse of the Gokhale over-bridge. The WR yesterday said it was not aware about pipelines and optic fibre cable laid on the collapsed over-bridge. “This is not the time to indulge in ‘blame game’. Everyone knows what an optic fibre cable weighs…almost negligible. Maybe, the permission was granted at the local ward level, but railway’s nod is a pre-requisite condition for laying out the optic fibre cable,” Kori added With inputs from PTI