The district land acquisition officers have placed a demand for Rs 3,500 crore before the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) for commencing the land acquisition process for the western phase of the proposed 170 km Pune Ring road.

It has been decided to build a network of 5,267 km expressways in the state to reduce the distance between the districts by making communication facilities more efficient in Maharashtra. Accordingly, the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) will be working on expressways of about 4,217 km, while through the National Highways Authority (NHI), about 1,500 km of expressways will be constructed.

Even before the highway is thrown open for traffic, the under-construction corridor has received Rs 500 crore for the state exchequer.

The proposed Alibaug-Virar Corridor revised detailed project report will be ready in three months. The new report may have certain changes in plan and cost. As of now, he measurement for land acquisition of a total of 51 villages has been completed.

The Thane Creek Bridge (TCB)-3 construction work has been finally begun by the Larsen & Toubro, appointed as contractor by MSRDC. The civil work of this much awaited creek bridge was supposed to have begun two years ago. However, the want of permission for cutting mangroves and the mutation of land titleship for afforestation was required.

The final hurdle for the construction of the third Thane creek bridge (TCB III), that has been pending for almost a year, has been cleared. The state revenue department issued the order to the suburban collector (Bandra) to hand over the compensatory land to the forest department in lieu of the mangrove land.

MSRDC is keen to take up construction of a road from Amne village in Bhiwandi to Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT). The super e-way from Nagpur terminates at Amne, through which food exports will get channelled from central India to JNPT. While the e-way is being constructed by MSRDC, the 24-km connect from Amne to JNPT is proposed to be constructed by National Highway Authority of India (NHAI).

Plans to undertake repair and refurbishment work on the 1,135-metre-long Sion flyover. Indian Institute of Technology — Bombay (IIT-B) has suggested that the MSRDC do the repair work after a structural audit. Ajay Pal Mangal & co. is the contractor.

Nagpur-Mumbai Super Communication Expressway project is planned. Reliance Infrastructure and L&T are in the race. MSRDC has opened financial bids to construct 13 out of 16 packages of the 700-km long project. Bid process for the remaining three packages are still under progress and will be announced later.