To make space for hulking machines that will shortly begin to pound SA Road for the Metro Rail’s Kadavanthra station works, the traffic police have advised motorists to take AL Jacob flyover and Subhash Bose Road to reach Vyttila.
The construction barricades have been causing traffic hold-up as the four-lane road narrows down to two lanes in front of Greater Cochin Development Authority (GCDA) office. “This can be prevented if cars and smaller vehicles use alternative routes to reach Vyttila. Delay can be avoided if people begin their trip earlier than usual,” said K.S. Baby Vinod, Assistant Commissioner of City Traffic Police.
Similarly, vehicles moving from Vyttila to MG Road can turn left at Elamkulam, take Chilavanoor Road and Ponneth Temple Road, enter Girinagar and Panampilly Nagar and gain access to South overbridge.
Piling for the station will commence shortly at the site. “Currently, work is on to identify cables and pipelines and to shift them. This may take a few days since KWA, KSEB etc., do not have records of their precise location. A similar problem held up works on MG Road after a hydraulic rig hit an 11-kv underground power line during piling,” an official associated with Kochi Metro Rail said.
There are fears that the chicken-neck bridge atop a canal near GCDA office will choke the flow of traffic once piling begins. The bridge should have been widened as part of metro’s preparatory works, source said.
“Metro’s alignment intruding into South overbridge is another problem and this too will have to be looked into,” the sources said.
Kochi Metro Rail Limited MD Elias George said traffic management plan for SA Road will be finalised in a week’s time.
Sreedharan visit
Delhi Metro Rail Corporation’s Principal Advisor E. Sreedharan said here on Monday that any major project of this scale would have teething troubles in the initial months. “Work has gained pace and will not suffer delay,” he said.
He visited metro’s coach-maintenance depot at Muttom near Aluva, where earth filling work is under way. He also inspected works at L&T’s casting yard at HMT land in Kalamassery. Later, he travelled through the metro alignment from Aluva to Ernakulam South, where over a dozen piling sites have been barricaded.
Mr. Sreedharan also checked out the site near Ernakulam Junction railway station where a metro station has been proposed. Back at the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation office here, he exhorted personnel to adhere to metro’s commissioning deadline – 2016.
