No more flyovers

No more flyovers
Vijay Times

The Citys travails with half-complete flyovers may soon be over, as the new Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) commissioner, M K Shankarlinge Gowda, has given a thumbs-down to any more flyovers in the City.

Gowda even as the pending projects will be completed, new proposals, conventional or steel fabricated ones, as visualised by his predecessor M N Vidyashankar, would not be taken up. Instead, stress would be laid on developing underpasses and grade separators, since they are more convenient for completion without posing problems for the people, he said.

The six-member, high power infrastructure committee, during Vidyashankars tenure, had suggested hi-tech steel fabricated flyovers, instead of conventional ones to minimise problems to the people.

This followed the Airport Road and Jayadeva flyovers remaining incomplete, leading to chaos on roads and traffic jams on a daily basis.

Committee members, in one of their meetings had concluded, no future construction of conventional flyovers be taken up. But, if required, it has to be done in consultation with traffic police, who would identify the areas where flyovers are needed to decongest roads.

However, the committee also stated, in future, the flyovers would have to be steel-fabricated and built off-site before being brought for assembly on-site at nights, when traffic density is at its lowest.

Earlier, in August 2005, Vidyashankar had announced that hi-tech German technology will be used to build mobile flyovers of the future. The technology required just three to four months to complete a flyover project -- less than half the time taken to build conventional concrete flyovers. Further, it entailed no digging, no additional land for acquisition and no inconvenience to public.

However, the construction cost was estimated to be at least 50 per cent higher, which, however, is balanced due to the short duration of construction and people-friendly technology in terms of value addition.

Meanwhile, Gowdas plan is to complete the Jayadeva and Airport Road flyovers and ensure the Ramamurthy Nagar Outer Ring Road and Magadi Road-Chord Road underpasses are complete within a year.