Mumbai’s civic body has taken a renewed step toward easing the city’s traffic burden by reintroducing its multi-modal tunnel connectivity project. After delays and a tepid response to its initial tender process earlier this year, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has floated a revised tender to appoint expert consultants tasked with conducting feasibility studies, preparing a master layout, and overseeing the eventual implementation of the proposed tunnel network.
The project, which carries an estimated cost of ₹4,392 crore, aims to establish a multi-layered underground transport system across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR). Designed to address the city's long-term urban mobility needs, the initiative is expected to significantly reduce vehicular congestion while enhancing regional accessibility. It was in October 2023 that the Maharashtra government had constituted an eight-member committee to draft a long-term vision for this tunnel system, keeping in view the rapid expansion projected for the MMR over the next three decades. However, efforts to onboard consultants earlier in February 2024 had witnessed limited participation, largely due to technical constraints and insufficient bidder confidence.
To restart momentum, the civic body has this month released a fresh tender. The selected consultancy will be entrusted with assessing traffic density, determining location feasibility, designing tunnel blueprints, assisting in contractor selection, and supervising construction. As per preliminary estimates, each six-kilometre tunnel segment is expected to cost around ₹732 crore. Consultancy firms will be eligible only if they have executed infrastructure projects worth ₹5,000 crore or more, and have built either an eight-kilometre-long tunnel or two tunnels of five kilometres each, with a minimum tunnel width of five metres, within the past ten years. Additionally, experience with tunnel boring machine (TBM) operations and twin-deck design structures is mandatory.
While the tender process has been relaunched, internal voices from within the BMC have acknowledged concerns regarding overall traffic management. The city is currently navigating multiple large-scale infrastructure developments simultaneously—including the Goregaon-Mulund Link Road (GMLR), the Madh-Versova connector, and Phase II of the coastal road. Questions have thus been raised about the feasibility and coordination of traffic studies amid these overlapping initiatives.
Despite the complexities, the revived tunnel project is being viewed as a strategic investment in Mumbai’s mobility future—one that seeks to lay down the groundwork for a modern, multi-modal transport ecosystem beneath the city’s surface.