The 150-day countdown for the construction of the 40-metre obligatory span across the arterial road to link the Power House and Thakaraparambu roads for the 425-m long, 12-m wide flyover at Mele Pazhavangadi has started.
The piling work at location VI on the mouth of the Thakaraprambu road was in full swing after a building of the Corporation Employee’s Cooperative Society was demolished. The work was scheduled for completion in 20 days, sources said.
(A span is the space between two pillars and an obligatory span is the space under a flyover where vehicles are allowed to move).
Thiruvananthapuram Road Development Company Ltd. (TRDCL), the concessionaire of the 42-km City Road Improvement Project (CRIP), would set up a countdown board at the worksite to indicate the progress of the work.
Educational institutions would remain closed for the next two months and TRDCL authorities expected to take advantage of this to expedite the work, sources said.
TRDCL managing director Anil Kumar Pandala said the work on the obligatory span would be taken up without extensively disturbing vehicular traffic.
The delay in acquiring five cents of land and demolishing the society building there had affected the work. The Kerala Road Fund Board, the special purpose vehicle (SPV) for the project, managed to overcome the hurdle by paying Rs.1 crore as compensation, Mr. Pandala said.
As part of expediting the work that had already missed the 22-month deadline, the construction of the single remaining span on Powerhouse Road would also be taken up along with this. The ‘staging’ works near Parthas would start soon and the aim was to complete the obligatory span and the span on the Parthas side in the next 200 days, Mr. Pandala said.
Crossover facility was being explored near the Parthas side to ease the traffic problems. The Rs.37-crore flyover would have 12 spans — five of 25 m, six of 30 m, and one of 40 m. The 25-m span, the first of the 12, was the first to be cast on Powerhouse Road.
The piles were reduced from 83 to 68 and the length from 510 m to 425 m to ensure smooth flow of traffic to Sreekanteswaram and to protect the heritage Fort walls. Of the 68 piles, 52 had been completed.
Mr. Pandala said the authorities had not been able to clear the site for taking up work at pile locations IV and V as traders had not been rehabilitated.
At 11 pile locations, 8 piers had been completed and these were ready for girders and deck slabs. Of 12 spans, 4 had been completed and on another two, work was on. The remaining six could be taken up only after the pile locations were cleared, he said.
The ramp for the flyover would begin from near the second entry of the railway station and near the RKV bus depot on the Thakaraparambu road at the other end.
The second flyover under CRIP would be a three-lane bidirectional road with full length grade separators. “If there are no hitches, it will be completed by January 2015 by reducing the construction period by five months,” he added.
