Mamata inaugurates Kolkata’s longest flyover

Kolkata

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee gave a Durga Puja gift to Kolkata by inaugurating the city’s longest flyover — country’s third longest elevated road — of 7.7 kilometres on Friday that should ease the traffic nightmare to a great extent in some parts of the city.

While the main flyover is 4.5km long, the total length, including the flanks and the ramps, is more than 9km. The flyover will allow one to reach EM Bypass from Howrah in a seamless movement across three flyovers, covering only 300 meters on the ground — near Park Circus Maidan — and 500 meters between the Police Training School and the second Hooghly bridge.

The ground distance will be reduced further once a flank connecting the Parama Island- Park Circus flyover with the AJC Bose Road flyover is finished. Work on this project will start from Saturday.

Heavy vehicles though are barred from plying over the flyover as the government does not want a recurrence of the Ultadanga flyover fiasco where a portion of the elevated road collapsed after a truck hit the break junctions.

“Not only have signs on restricting big vehicles have been put up, also physical barriers have been created so that cars exceeding a certain height can’t access the Park Circus-Parama Island flyover,” Urban development secretary Debasish Sen said.

Speaking at the inaugural ceremony Banerjee lashed out at the erstwhile Communist Party of India — Marxist (CPI-M) regime for “not doing enough” for the development of the state. “In 34 years (1977-2011) the CPI-M had ruined the state. They had not taken up any developmental work in those years. They had pushed the state into a debt trap. And now when the people have rejected them and sent them to opposition benches, they are trying to create violence in the state and halt developmental work,” Banerjee alleged.

The journey of Bengal’s longest flyover started in 2003 under the stewardship of chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. It was the brainchild of a committee of the state transport department. In February 2010, when construction began, the deadline was August 2012. Then, work stopped for 20 months.

However, construction finally started in February 2013. The initial cost estimate was Rs3.2 billion (Dh49.37 billion), but post cost escalation it came to Rs4.57 billion, Rs1.3 billion higher than the original budget.

Given the expected benefits, many are calling it a much-awaited Puja gift for the city’s citizens.