THANE: The construction of the much delayed road over bridge at Diva could soon see some traction as the Thane municipal administration is in the final stages of clearing and rehabilitating the encroachers settled in its course.The rehabilitation was one of the main issues delaying the process, inform civic officials. Once completed, the bridge will lead to closure of level crossing located near Diva railway station reducing delays on CR schedules and minimising mishaps.The ROB project was proposed to the TMC in 2013 by the Central Railway and has since seen several delays mostly due to continuous revisions in the bridge designs. However, a consensus over the drawings is likely to have reached after the corporation sent a revised alignment drawing to the railways recently. The Thane municipal corporation in the meantime is readying itself for undertaking biometric survey of those settlements coming in the course of the landing of the bridge at its either ends.“We are in the final stages of conducting the biometric survey after which we will relocate the nearly 360 residents who are settled in the way of the project. The residents will be shifted to alternative homes after which we will start constructing the bridge,” informed civic officials. The corporation said that once an approval was sought from the railways, it will approach the general body for cost approval and start its process.The project is being executed on a cost sharing basis between the railways and the corporation. The 650m-long bridge project will be executed in two phases- the 90m span over the tracks will be executed by the railway contractor and the near 550m stretch at either ends will be constructed by the civic contractor.The bridge will be a two-lane structure, around 15m wide, with space for pedestrians on one side. The structure will cross the busy Central Railway lines near Diva railway station providing the much required east west uninterrupted connectivity. The estimate cost of the job to be done by the TMC is Rs 34cr while that of the railways hasn’t been known yet.The project had been delayed for several years due to reported lack of consensus between the municipal corporation and the railways due to which residents and commuters suffered a lot. While city motorists had to wait endlessly for the gates to open, railways services used to lose their punctuality by at least 5-10minutes on an average waiting at the level crossing which was operated minimum 60 times in a single day.Railway officials informed that once the bridge was constructed, the level crossing will not be operational thus reducing delays. “The bridge will lead to improvement of railway traffic and also road vehicular movements will be uninterrupted, informed an official. In addition, there will be reduction in mishaps like the one on Monday where two men rode their scooter from under the shut barrier gate and got crushed under a passing train.

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