Mumbai’s ambitious Goregaon-Mulund Link Road (GMLR) project is set to enter its most critical construction phase, with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) preparing to begin tunnel excavation this weekend. The civic body has completed the assembly of the first Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) at the Goregaon worksite and has written to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis seeking his approval to formally launch the machine.
The Rs 14,000 crore GMLR will provide a direct east-west link between Goregaon and Mulund, connecting the western suburbs with the Eastern Express Highway through a 12.2-km corridor. Its most complex component is a 6.65-km twin tunnel that will begin near Film City, pass beneath the Sanjay Gandhi National Park and run under forested terrain, hillocks and the Tulsi and Vihar water catchments before emerging near Khindipada in Mulund.
A TBM operates through a rotating cutter head fitted with teeth, spokes and sharp protrusions that cut through soil and rock as the machine advances. The two TBMs are expected to excavate a length of 4.45 km under the GMLR.
The first machine, positioned on the northern alignment, will excavate the carriageway for traffic travelling from Goregaon towards Mulund. Assembly of the second TBM is still underway. The excavation comes almost a year after the first consignments of the Japanese-made TBMs began arriving in Mumbai in July 2025.
The GMLR project is slated to be executed by 2028. Spanning a total distance of 12.2 km, the project entails four phases with the first phase involving road widening, followed by a second phase comprising flyover construction in the western suburbs along with the TBM-driven tunnels. The subsequent phase includes a road-over-bridge at Nahur, connecting to the final phase, which is an elevated flyover with clover-leaf interchanges up to Airoli.
