VBSL Realignment

 

VBSL, Mumbai: Realigned

Mumbai is a Coastal City.
From Bandra to Versova, we have about 11 kilometers of coastline, this includes promenades and the beach.

The Versova Bandra Sea Link, or the VBSL has been planned as a 9.6km long road in the sea, 1 km away from the city, so in effect, the VBSL needs another 7.6km of connector roads!
That's 80% additional roadway just to bridge the bridge!!

Unfortunately, where it meets land, the waterfronts get interrupted.

What if we realign the 3 connectors to h have just 2 connectors?
And by placing them CORRECTLY, we improve CONNECTIVITY within the city.

This new realigned VBSL would be SHORTER and therefore CHEAPER to construct, and it would be BETTER, as the traffic would be more evenly distributed within the City which it is built to serve!

This would give us an UNINTERRUPTED Beaches of 7.5 kilometers and an uninterrupted Carter Road Promenade 1.7km long.

Let's have a look at the connector planned at Carter Road.
By exiting perpendicular at Otter's, it creates a,*major traffic bottleneck* at Carter road. Further, this is planned too close to the existing exit at Reclamation.

Likewise, the Juhu connector which exits over a nallah at Lido leads to a roundabout at Juhu Koliwada and traffic there, whilst coming in over a beach!
All this can be easily avoided by realigning the connector to exit at Khar danda.
From here we can easily connect to Bandra, to Khar & to Juhu, quite the same.

Let's look ahead at the Versova connector.
This connector is designed to come to Nana Nani park, over a beach, a creek, and mangroves!
This seems irrational because you can come to the same exit point by easily realigning the connector... very simple... so why not?
Let's save Carter road!
Let's save Juhu & Versova beaches!
Let's save the city!

Program: Urban Planning | Public Space

Scale: 

Year: 2021

Team: Abraham John, Alan Abraham, Anca Florescu

Location: Mumbai

Status: Proposed