Deadlines lapse, work crawls

Deadlines lapse, work crawls
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: Time has passed, deadlines have passed but work on the road under bridge near Cantonment Railway Station is crawling like the vehicles that have to pass under it.

After a series of lapsed deadlines, Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP) had made a “final” promise that the bridge would be ready by May 31. Even that has passed and even today there seems little possibility that it would be open in another couple of months.

The Rs 6.36-crore project was delayed due to BMP’s sluggishness in negotiating with the South Western Railway and then there was an issue of acquisition of land, which was encroached by some poor families. Interestingly the BMP realised these issues only after starting the project and there were delays while it kept on giving fresh deadlines.

A BMP official told this website's newspaper that the bridge adopts box pushing methodology in making the roads under the rail tracks and about 60 per cent of the work was complete and casting the additional boxes is ‘mostly’ complete.

But with monsoon already here, the work might get delayed further. Well, that is how BMP works.

But in the meantime, taking a diversion is more like an expedition for motorists who have to drive through narrow lanes of Nandidurg Extension, which are neither designed for the additional load nor the traffic intensity. As a consequence the motorists crawl to their destinations.