A 29.6 km corridor between Panvel and Karjat is being built under the Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP) 3. People living in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region will get great relief from this corridor. The longest tunnel of the Surban Railway is being built on this corridor. Drilling up to 1 km of Waverly tunnel, about 2.5 km long, has been completed. The work on this corridor by the Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation (MRVC) is expected to be completed by December 2025.
Waverly tunnel work started from February 2023 and drilling of one km has been completed in 7 months. 3 tunnels of total length of 3,144 meters are being built on this corridor. Out of these, the work of waterproofing and concrete lining of the Nadhal tunnel of 219-meter tunnel is going on. The permission of the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has been received for this corridor, in which permission has been given to work on 9.1321 hectares of forest land.
For this corridor, Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation (MRVC) required 56.87 hectares of private land, 4.4 hectares of government land, and 9.13 hectares of forest land, which has been acquired. The forest land is the land of Barvai, Bherle, Wavarle, Belwali, Bhingar, Lodhiwali, Kirwali and Vanjale villages. The line to be built from Panvel to Karjat, in a way will also reduce the distance between CSMT and Karjat and will give a new option to the people going from Panvel to Karjat. There will be five stations on this corridor.
Apart from freight trains, some long-distance passenger trains run on the existing corridors of Panvel, Khalapur and Karjat. The new corridor will have five stations namely Panvel, Chiklay, Mahape, Chowk and Karjat, and will have 58 bridges along the entire route. A total of ₹10,947 crore is to be spent for MUTP 3, of which the Panvel Karjat corridor is also one. The project was approved in December 2016, while the new deadline has been set for March 2025.
There are still many routes in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region which, despite being a part of the MMR, are highly disconnected from the city. These areas can be called the green fields of Mumbai. Considering the rapid development of Mumbai, projects like Panvel-Karjat or Diva-Panvel are necessary. By connecting the Raigarh district area of Navi Mumbai to Karjat, the real estate sector will also get a big boost. However, many people have already invested in land here 10-15 years ago. The project was commissioned in January 2018. To complete it soon, approvals are being received rapidly from the state government and the central government.
