Even after a year of its closure to traffic, the fate of the damaged Palarivattom flyover on the NH Bypass remains uncertain.
Fear is rife that traffic bottleneck at Palarivattom will worsen when the six-lane flyovers at Vyttila and Kundannur are commissioned in July or August as there will be additional inflow of vehicles into the bypass.
Neither the Public Works Department (PWD) nor the Roads and Bridges Development Corporation of Kerala (RBDCK), which constructed the four-lane flyover, is sure of the way forward.
Traffic hold-ups are still the order of the day at the Palarivattom Bypass Junction although most passenger buses, autorickshaws, taxi cars, and educational institution vehicles are keeping away from the road owing to COVID-19 curbs. “We are helpless since the case is pending before the Supreme Court,” said sources in the two agencies.
A non-starter
The State government went in appeal before the apex court, after the Kerala High Court ordered a load test to assess the strength of the structure. The litigation resulted in the execution of the government’s proposal to knock off the girders of the structure and rebuild them becoming a non-starter.
According to the plan, the work was to begin in October 2019 and end in August 2020.
Fed up with traffic snarls and even ambulances getting stuck in the chaos, Girijan K.V., a former BSNL employee and secretary of the CPI(M)’s Padivattom branch, sent a petition to the Chief Minister.
“It was then forwarded to the police, who said an electronic signal system would be installed at the junction to streamline traffic flow. This alone will not do. Free left turns also must be cleared. The police must set up barricades so that one lane on all sides is set apart for free left turn. Vehicles that block the turn must be penalised,” Mr. Girijan said.
He demanded that the PWD widen the Civil Line Road that crisscrosses the junction. Bus stops too must be relocated away from the junction. The long-pending Mamangalam-Goshree Road project too must be revived, he said.