Another road bridge on Mumbai railway line cracks up, repaired

Adding to the ongoing monsoon woes, an important road bridge with two pedestrian walkways on Grant Road station in south Mumbai was closed after potentially dangerous cracks were noticed on Wednesday.

However, the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials assured that only surface cracks had developed and repairing it would not be a complex or time-consuming affair.

It was repaired on a priority basis during the day and finally thrown open for normal traffic operations this evening, said an official of the BMC Disaster Control.

Earlier this morning, adopting a precautionary approach, the Mumbai Traffic Police posted a tweet: "The bridge at Grant Road station has cracked, hence the traffic has been diverted to Nana Chowk towards Kennedy Bridge."

The bridge was cordoned off at both ends since morning and the urgent repairs were undertaken, even as traffic jams were witnessed at some locations due to its sudden closure.

The development came barely 24 hours after the Andheri station incident when a portion of the Gokhale Bridge walkway crashed injuring five persons and paralyzing the Western Railway and Harbour Line of Central Railway for nearly 16 hours.

After the services were restored with all suburban and long-distance lines operational, there were delays of around 20-30 minutes as trains moved slowly around Andheri which suffered huge damage to overhead equipment and the high-tension electrical wires on Tuesday.

In another rain-related incident, a massive tree crashed inside the Mumbai Police Commissionerate premises and crushed the cars of two IPS officers at Crawford Market this afternoon, while another huge tree collapsed in the New Marine Lines, barely a couple of kilometres away. There were no casualties in both the incidents.

Mumbai and surroundings continued to be lashed with intermittent rains on Wednesday and IMD recorded 119 mm rains at Santacruz and 73 mm in Colaba.

The forecast for the next 48 hours to Friday evening is intermittent rains or showers with heavy to very heavy rains at some locations.

--IANS

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