Last Hurdle In Expressway Removed; Undone Stretches Await Land

It will be a treat of a ride
Last Hurdle In Expressway Removed; Undone Stretches Await Land
The Times of India

Bangalore: A little after Kengeri on Mysore Road, there’s a narrow dusty path on the left that will take you up a gradient and to a point from where you will see some feverish road building activity.

Go down that path some distance and you can actually get on to the road itself. Fairly lengthy stretches of the road are almost ready. It’s no ordinary road. Karnataka has not seen anything like this so far. It’s 75 metres broad, and though it is marked as four lanes, it actually has the breadth of a normal six-lane road. And the quality of the road is — from what we amateurs can understand — excellent. The road builders say it’s as good as an airport runway.

In some places, lane markings are being carried out. In some other places, all that remains is a final coating of high density bitumen and the lane markings. Along one stretch, high-mast lights have also been installed.

In short, Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise’s (NICE) Rs 2,850-crore project to build a peripheral road connecting Hosur Road and Tumkur Road via Mysore Road, and an expressway connecting Bangalore and Mysore is fast becoming a reality. And the Supreme Court order of Thursday effectively removes the remaining hurdles.

The hurdles have been primarily related to issues of handing over the required land to NICE. At Sompura (between Mysore Road and Kanakapura Road), land for 500 metres of road was handed over just a month ago. At the junction of Mysore Road and NICE’s peripheral road near Kengeri, the government is yet to hand over land for a ramp that will connect the two roads.

Near Hosakerehalli (Banashankari 3rd stage), land for 300 metres of road remains to be handed over. Another similar length of road in Banashankari 6th stage remains completely undone because NICE still has no rights to it — thanks to a dispute regarding whether it is social forestry land.

The final 6 km of the first phase of the expressway — the Bangalore-Bidadi stretch — also has seen no progress because the required land has not been given by the government.

At Gottegere (between Kanakapura Road and Bannerghatta Road), two stretches of 200 metres and 300 metres respectively face a similar problem. The latter is particularly interesting because it has a property with posh condominiums — allegedly set up after the government’s notification for acquisition.

“The government has been holding back some of these lands on the grounds that the Supreme Court verdict is awaited. Now that the verdict is in, we expect we will get all the land we are supposed to get,” said a NICE spokesperson.

NICE says about 80 per cent of the work on the first phase of the project is complete and Rs 800 crore of money already spent. It now requires 950 acres of land for the remaining part of the first phase, and NICE says all that land has already been acquired by the government and only needs to be handed over to the company.

While the peripheral road is 75 metres broad, the expressway will be 90 metres broad. Every 250 metres, there are ducts provided for all utility cables, so that the road would never have to be cut for laying cables. Every 500 metres there are underpasses for people and vehicles, so that the NICE roads do not inconvenience those who cannot pay its toll. At no point is the road gradient more than 3 degrees (an international standard), which ensures heavy vehicles will not slow down. And everywhere, provision is being made so that the roads can be broadened in the event of traffic becomes too heavy some years later.

In other words, what Karnataka looks set to have is an international quality road that will make travelling between Tumkur Road and Hosur Road, and between Bangalore and Mysore an absolute treat.

PROJECT DEADLINE

THE TIMELINE
1995: Project proposed by NICE Limited — 1995 1998: Preliminary notification for land along highway and first township July 2000: Public hearings in Banglore, Mysore and Mandya August 2001: Environment clearance for project August 2001: Toll-franchise agreement May 2002: Dharam Singh’s deadline for project to take off