The steel flyover at Shivananda Circle will finally be completed and thrown open to the public by August 15, the civic body has said.
“We recently got approval for design changes to the flyover from the Karnataka High Court and work is underway on a war footing. We will complete the work by August 15,” said Lokesh, chief engineer, projects, BBMP.
After building the skeleton of the flyover, the BBMP ran into land acquisition problems, grounding the project. It had to acquire 500 sq.m of land towards the Seshadripuram railway underpass and this ran into legal challenges. Days before the project was to be completed in November 2021, BBMP opted for the design change to make do with the available land.
The civic body had built a skeleton of the down ramp towards the Seshadripuram railway underpass with a gradient of 5.5. This was increased to 6.6, which is the maximum gradient allowed as per the Indian Road Congress guidelines. This essentially means the down ramp starts earlier and the flyover lands much before the earlier design, making acquiring the hotly contested 500 sq.m of land unnecessary. “This not steers the civic body away from legal challenges, but also saves ₹40 crore,” Mr. Lokesh said.
But there are concerns over increasing the gradient of the flyover. Ashish Verma, convener, IISc Sustainable Transportation Lab, said it has to be ensured that no design flaw creeps into the flyover. “When the gradient increases, it may affect the visibility of vehicles if there is a sharp turn,” he said.
Decision on Ejipura flyover soon
The BBMP will serve a notice over the weekend to Simplex Infrastructure Ltd., which is carrying out work on Ejipura flyover, before deciding on the next course of action. The Karnataka High Court had recently asked the civic body to take an independent decision after sorting out differences with the project proponent.
“The project proponent has submitted an affidavit in the court saying they will see through the project. So, we will serve them a notice and review their work and finances. Later, we will take a call on whether to continue with the same project proponent or float new tenders for the remaining work,” said chief civic commissioner Tushar Giri Nath.
