Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde laid the foundation stone on July 26 for a traffic decongestion project at Teen Hath Naka, the seven-way junction in central Thane long blamed for some of the longest signal waits in the country. The plan, designed with input from European infrastructure consultants, reroutes underground water, gas and fuel lines and aims to cut the junction’s signal cycle from close to three minutes to about 15 seconds.
Teen Hath Naka sits at the confluence of routes to Mumbai, Nashik, Naupada, Wagle Estate and Kopri, and will also feed traffic toward Thane’s upcoming railway station. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority’s share of the work centers on two U-shaped flyovers, costed at roughly Rs 300 crore, meant to lift through-traffic clear of the signal altogether.
A junction with a history of unfinished fixes
Thane residents have watched MMRDA cycle through plans for this junction before. Social activist Sneha Singh, quoted by the Free Press Journal, pointed to the existing U-shaped flyover at nearby Majiwada as a cautionary example: commuters largely avoid it because the detour it forces takes longer than sitting through the signal. Singh also asked what became of an earlier MMRDA plan to reconstruct the old flyover here, a project residents say quietly disappeared without explanation.
Other residents raised a more basic worry: shutting the at-grade signals to push all traffic onto the new flyovers could simply move the jam onto the flyover ramps. Resident Rajneesh Kulkarni argued the design was drawn up without a proper ground survey of how traffic actually behaves at the junction.
What it means for commuters
For the vehicles that pass through Teen Hath Naka daily, the promise is straightforward: less time stuck at a signal that has become a byword for Thane’s traffic misery. But construction on a junction this busy means years of active work zones before any relief materializes, and the skepticism from residents who lived through the Majiwada flyover’s shortcomings points to a design case MMRDA has not yet made publicly. No technical report or simulation of post-construction traffic flow has been released alongside the launch, which is the specific transparency gap activists are pressing on.
The project is also bundled politically with a larger slate Shinde announced the same day, including the Thane Coastal Road, an Eastern Freeway extension, a proposed Thane-Borivali twin tunnel under Sanjay Gandhi National Park, a pod-taxi network and a 900-bed civic hospital. Shinde told officials projects should not stall after ceremonial launches, an implicit acknowledgment that past groundbreakings in Thane have not always ended in finished infrastructure.
Outlook
Whether Teen Hath Naka avoids Majiwada’s fate depends on details MMRDA has not yet published: a construction timeline, phased traffic diversion plans, and the technical report residents are asking for. Thane’s civic and traffic police departments will need to manage years of diversions through one of the region’s busiest corridors while the flyovers rise, and how they handle that will shape whether the project’s early skeptics come around.
This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.
Sources: The Print, Free Press Journal