India's first sea bridge, connecting Bandra and Worli in Mumbai will be opened to traffic on Tuesday midnight. The travel times will be cut by 80% to just 8 minutes bypassing several signals that commuters will have to endure.

The Rs 750-crore bridge is 4.7 km long. On Monday night, there was a laser show coupled with music. It was witnessed by thousands of people from Bandra and Mahim. It was not clearly visible from Worli sea face and Dadar due to slight drizzles and haze. The travel time will be cut drastically from Wednesday morning and people commuting during peak hours can heave a huge sigh of relief.

The authorities hope to see some 150,000 vehicles use it each day for a toll that ranges between Rs 50 and Rs 100 per trip depending on the size of the automobile.

Sonia Gandhi is slated to inaugurate the gleaming new sea link, which has been billed as an engineering marvel and the most prestigious project for the Maharashtra State Road Development Corp (MSRDC) in over a decade, after the Mumbai-Pune Expressway.

And Mumbaikars are visibly excited, including a galaxy of actors, corporate biggies, and the average commuter, as the sea link has surpassed all other projects of the state-run firm in terms of its sheer beauty, grandeur and the attention that it has grabbed from the whole country in the past few months.

The project involved some 3,000 professionals from 11 countries, including China, Egypt, Singapore, Thailand, and even Serbia and Switzerland. The bridge, that used 2.3 lakh cubic metres of concrete, weighs 6.7 lakh tonnes. Steel wires of length 37,680 km have been used to construct the bridge.