Even as the Vyttila flyover is getting ready for commissioning in less than a month, doubts remain about the second phase development work at the junction, including the construction of a four-lane underpass linking SA Road and Thripunithura Road.
It is uncertain whether the State government’s present financial situation will permit the execution of the second phase development of Vyttila, the biggest junction in Kerala which is used by approximately 1 lakh passenger car units. The four-lane underpass in the east-west direction might not get administrative and technical sanction owing to fund crunch. The fact that the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) owns the 16-km-long Edappally-Aroor NH 47 Bypass, where the project has been proposed, may further deter allocation of funds and allied proposals that the five-member committee headed by then PWD Principal Secretary had put forward in 2019 to streamline vehicle flow at the junction, PWD sources said.
The underpass had been suggested by, among others, Metroman E. Sreedharan, considering the high traffic density at the junction in the east-west direction.
“Apart from fund paucity to build an underpass, there will have to be substantial land acquisition on SA Road and Thripunithura Road, to ready service roads at all the four bell mouths of the junction, for vehicles wanting to take left turn. This will further increase the project cost,” the sources added.
The PWD (NH Wing) decided to fund the six-lane flyovers at Vyttila and Kundannoor as exceptional cases, for fear that the NHAI would steeply hike the already exorbitant toll rate. Apart from a four-lane underpass, the PWD was considering extending the service roads at Vyttila further northward (towards the Palarivattom side), to establish link with a two-lane underpass that could be hewed out near the railway track. This gains relevance, since the underpass beneath the Vyttila overbridge is not wide enough to accommodate vehicles in either direction.
Yet another long-pending demand is that the PWD (Roads Wing) widen the two-lane stretch from Vyttila Junction to Kunnara Park, which was left out of the purview of the four-laning work when the Kochi metro viaduct was constructed up to Pettah. Both SA Road on the western side and the Kunnara Park-Pettah stretch on the eastern side have four-lane width. Apprehensions are rife that traffic snarls in the bottlenecked corridor will worsen when the flyover is commissioned and more vehicles converge at Vyttila.
