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About Bandra Worli Sealink :

The 5.6 kilometer Bandra Worli Sealink, which crosses the Arabian Sea, linking the Mumbai suburbs with south Mumbai, is viewed as an engineering marvel. This cable-stayed bridge (one that consists of one or more columns, with cables supporting the bridge deck) apparently contains steel wire equivalent to the circumference of the earth. The bridge also weighs the same as 50,000 African elephants, and used 90,000 tonnes of cement -- enough to make five 10 storied buildings. The Sealink hasn't been without controversy though. Delays, due to public litigation, doubled the amount of time it took to construct it from the estimated five years, to 10 years. The original cost estimate also increased from 6.6 billion rupees ($119.46 million) to 16 billion rupees ($289.6 million). The first four lanes were opened to the public on 30 June 2009. All eight lanes were opened on 24 March 2010.

History of Bandra Worli Sealink

When anyone in Bombay refers to the Sea Link, (and the reason why my inner Grammar Nazi does not suffer heart palpitations when I write my ‘S’ and my ‘L’ in the upper case and indeed, use the definite article ‘the’ before its name,) it is an irrefutable certainty that they are speaking of the megastructure that connects Bandra and Worli for there is, in spite of the government’s threats, just one such Sea Link in our city today. And what a glorious Sea Link it is! Grand cable-stayed towers reaching up gracefully towards the heavens, hefty steel viaducts on either side of an eight-lane concrete carpet that stretches a distance of 5.6 kilometres; surely it is the greatest architectural achievement of independent India? I remember its opening ceremony, over three years ago now, full of fireworks and sound and overflowing feelings of patriotic fervour gushing through our hairy chests: Maybe the Shanghai dream isn’t so far away after all? But time has its way of putting an end to misguided hope and it is universally obvious now that the only manner in which we’ve come closer to being Shanghai is a few more Chinese restaurants popping up in our midst, not that anyone’s complaining.

Getting to Bandra Worli Sealink