After breaching many deadlines, under-bridge in Tirupati all set for launch

However, there is uncertainty over date of formal launch in view of ‘Mahalaya Paksham’

A view of the Road Under-Bridge that has come up in place of railway level crossing on Rayala Cheruvu road in Tirupati. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

After missing the deadline several times, the Road Under-Bridge (RUB) at Rayala Cheruvu Road railway level crossing is finally getting ready, but a question mark hovers over the date of its formal inauguration.

As the track horizontally divides Tirupati, half of the city commutes daily to the other side for business, commercial and official work. An estimated 2.5 lakh vehicles passed through this railway gate every day before it was closed down two years back to facilitate the construction work. More than 50 trains, especially those bound to south-western Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala, pass through this track, necessitating its closure throughout the day.

The gate connects Prakasam Road to the perpendicular Rayala Cheruvu road that leads to several villages.

Once considered impossible to execute as it involved land acquisition and laying of a high-gradient road, the project was taken up as a challenge. The work was formally grounded in November 2020 by making use of traffic restrictions in place during the pandemic.

The Municipal Corporation of Tirupati (MCT) and the railways decided to go Dutch by spending ₹7.81 crore and ₹7.49 crore respectively towards the project.

Though it was scheduled to be completed in six months, the self-imposed deadline was breached several times. After MLA Bhumana Karunakar Reddy tendered a public apology for the delay in August, Mayor R. Sireesha Yadav and Commissioner Anupama Anjali promised to throw open the RUB by September 15.

Bottleneck

The under-bridge starts as a 15 metre-wide carriageway on RC Road, but narrows down to 12.5 metres and further shrinks to 8 metres at Netaji Road, thus creating a bottleneck. This, many feel, could cause more traffic snarls than serving the purpose.

The administrators are reportedly in a fix over whether to open the bridge in ‘Mahalaya Paksham’, considered inauspicious. The officials are also worried over the non-availability of the local legislator for the inaugural, in view of the Assembly sessions.

“We request the authorities to allow traffic on an experimental basis immediately through the under-bridge,” says A. Manjunath, president of Tirupati Chamber of Commerce.

The commercial outlets on RC Road rue over the loss of business for two years, while the daily visitors from the nearby villages such as farmers, milk vendors, vegetable sellers and students are also suffering a lot.