Mumbai-Goa highway to be ready by year-end

Shiv Kumar

Tribune News Service

Mumbai, June 24

The four-laned Mumbai-Goa coastal highway patterned on the Los Angeles-San Francisco Pacific Coast Highway will be completed by the end of this year, according to state government sources.

In a meeting with Union Road and Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari recently, state government officials assured him that all hurdles on the path of the coastal highway’s construction had been removed and work was going on in full swing.

“Land acquisition for the highway has been completed and construction of bridges and via ducts on the coastal highway is going on,” a state government official said.

The four-laned coastal highway was first proposed in 2016 and was to be completed in 2018. But the deadline was first shifted to March this year before being postponed to year-end.

However, the project was challenged before the courts. Last May, the Supreme Court cleared the construction work on some ecologically sensitive areas, state government sources say.

The coastal highway is expected to open up undiscovered areas of the Konkan region to tourists driving to Goa from Mumbai.

While it takes around 12 hours to cover the 590-km distance between Mumbai and Goa, the four-laned coastal highway will cut the time required to seven hours.