Thiruvananthapuram: The traffic on the service roads on NH-66 at Kazhakkoottam Junction will be diverted soon to facilitate the speedy completion of the works on the elevated stretch of the highway.
Commissioner Balramkumar Upadhyay who visited the work site on Tuesday said he has directed assistant Commissioner (city traffic) to prepare a list of possible alternative routes through which the traffic can be diverted. Once, the diversion is put in place, the vehicular movement along the service roads from Kazhakootam Junction to CSI Mission Hospital will be blocked.
“Since it is a national highway, the diversion may have adverse effects on the alternative routes chosen. Hence, I have also directed the traffic assistant commissioner to study the impacts of the diversion on the roads chosen for diversion,” Upadhyay said.
He added that the diversion will be enforced when the engineering firm carrying out the road works requests them to do so.
According to Colonel M R Nair, vice president of RDS Project Limited, the engineering firm that is carrying out the works, the traffic diversion needs to be possibly put in place after 20 days.
“Currently, we are carrying out the works on laying of the service roads. In around 20 days, these works will be over. We will then start the works on the super-structure of the elevated highway, for which the traffic has to be diverted,” M R Nair said.
He said the entire road is 45 metres wide. The super-structure of the elevated highway has a width of 21 metres. With the heavy machinery needed for the works to be stationed on the road, it would be inconvenient if the vehicles are allowed to pass through the service roads on either sides,” Nair said.
The commissioner’s site visit was prompted after a dispute broke out between local police and the workers of RDS Project Limited. The workers had demolished the periphery wall of Kazhakootam Police Station, which also houses the office of Kazhakootam cyber city assistant commissioner, as part of the project two months ago.
The new officers who took charge of the police station early this month following transfer of senior officers in connection with the upcoming assembly elections figured that the compound wall’s demolition compromised the safety of the station. They even confiscated the trucks and concrete mixers of the firm citing that they caused traffic obstruction and had fined them over Rs 15,000 on Friday.
A year ago, former district collector K Gopalakrishnan had directed the police to enforce traffic diversion to facilitate the works. The police, allegedly giving in to the pressure from local traders, did not comply to the order. The traders had complained that diverting the traffic would affect their business badly.
Though the road traffic was open, the works rendered the service roads unsafe for motorists, inviting criticism from the public, prompting minister Kadakampally Surendran to visit the spot. He directed the National Highway Authority of India officials to finish the works of the service roads first. But this was delayed owing to the delay in land acquisition as well as shifting of utility cables and a drainage.