BMC Budget: Road, rail, bridge connectivity budget exceeds healthcare

Even as the healthcare sector has received the largest budget allocation in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) 2019-20 budget of Rs 30,062 crore, it is the roads, rail and bridges combined that have benefitted the most.

While Rs 4,515 crore have been allocated to healthcare projects, roads; footpaths; traffic, and coastal road have been provided with a budget of Rs 4,700 crore. Around 14 per cent of the total budgetary allocation is for health, including upgrading peripheral hospitals like MT Agarwal, Shatabdi Govandi and Bhagvati Hospitals, salaries for doctors, employees and provision for public health; it is a rise of 15 per cent than the last year.

The civic body is spending over 15 per cent of the budget on roads. In the year 2018-19, nearly 313 km of roads were repaired. In the next year, repairs on nearly 370 km of roads has been proposed. Of this, 106 km roads will be made of cement-concrete and 172 km of asphalt; it also include resurfacing of the 92 km roads. Some of the major roads proposed for improvement are Mancherji Joshi road, Morland road in south city, JVLR, link road from SV Road to Mahavir Nagar and Sunder Nagar main road, Church Pakhadi road in Western suburbs and Ghatkopar-Mankhurd link road, Mahul road and LBS road in eastern suburbs.

The civic body has allocated a separate provision of Rs 100 crore for footpath repairs. It will also form a Parking Authority next year. Replacing conventional lights by LED too will complete with a provision of Rs 50 crore.

After the structural audit of all the bridges including flyovers, foot overbridges, skywalks and subways, the BMC will construct 14 new bridges and will repair 223 bridges with a provision of Rs 108 crore. Apart from the Goregaon-Mulund link road, Mahalaxmi station bridge, bridge near Infinity mall, an elevated road at Lokhandwala, a bridge at Parshiwada, Andheri, an extension of Jogeshwari station ROB is in the plan.

The coastal road project has got the momentum and the BMC made a provision of Rs 1,607 crore for the Rs 12,651 crore-project. The 10 km road work from Princess Street to Bandra-Worli Sea Link has started in three phases from November 2018 and is expected to complete within four years.