HYDERABAD: Completed in lower than six years, the 22-km Mumbai Trans Harbour Link, India’s longest sea bridge and one of many complicated mega infrastructure initiatives undertaken within the nation, noticed incorporation of superior Japanese building expertise.

Japan International Cooperation Agency or JICA has been the principal financier of the challenge, which integrated Orthotropic Steel Deck (OSD) expertise, enabling a relatively sooner completion of the challenge.

“We also made quite important proposals in terms of the bridge’s design. The Indian government’s original idea was construction through simple PC (Prestressed Concrete) girder bridges. JICA proposed more advanced Japanese girder technology which is robust, resilient enough, light in terms of weight, span is long and you can reduce the number of pillars and shorten construction time,” mentioned SAITO Mitsunori, Chief Representative, JICA India, in an interplay with ET Infra.

Mitsunori outlined that the challenge was initially to be undertaken in public-private partnership mode however was not profitable after which JICA got here in and suggested the Government of India and the Maharashtra state authorities to undertake the challenge in EPC or engineering, procurement and building mode with funding from JICA within the type of Official Development Loan and incorporating Japanese expertise.

According to JICA, OSD bridges have lesser self-weight and stronger construction than concrete or composite girder bridges and require fewer and smaller piers, resulting in shortening of building time in addition to much less impression on surroundings and ecosystem.

The OSDs had been manufactured by Japan’s IHI Infrastructure System, beneath IHI Corporation, a heavy-industry producer and had been assembled on the challenge website with most size of 180 metre and most weight round 2,600 metric tonne.

Atal Setu has decreased the journey time between South Mumbai and Navi Mumbai to twenty minutes from earlier 120 minutes and is anticipated to result in a number of financial advantages to the broader Mumbai Metropolitan Region.