Mumbai bridge develops cracks after rain

An important road bridge with two pedestrian walkways on Grant Road station in south Mumbai was closed after potentially dangerous cracks were noticed yesterday, adding to the ongoing monsoon woes.However, officials said the bridge was repaired by evening and reopened for traffic.Earlier in the morning, as 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 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 a portion of the Gokhale Bridge walkway at Andheri railway station crashed injuring five people and paralysing the Western Railway and Harbour Line of Central Railway services for nearly 16 hours.After the incident, the railways said it would conduct a safety audit of around 450 road over bridges, foot bridges and bridges over pipelines in Mumbai. The audit will be done by a director of an Indian Institute of Technology, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said.The accident at Andheri took place nine months after the Elphinstone Bridge collapse, which triggered a stampede that killed 23 people.In another rain-related incident, a massive tree crashed inside the Mumbai Police headquarters and crushed the cars of two officers at Crawford Market yesterday afternoon, while another huge tree collapsed in the New Marine Lines, a couple of kilometres away. There were no casualties in either incident.