By Ashraf Padanna/Thiruvananthapuram
Road works to decongest Kerala’s north-south highway - planned decades ago but stalled midway - are to finally get started.
The state and federal road authorities have adopted a new funding model without the much-hated tolls to complete some of these roads. Work is scheduled to start before the Onam festival in September and will be completed in 18 to 24 months.
The Kollam, Alappuzha and Kozhikode bypasses will be taken up in the first phase with the state and central governments agreeing to meet the expenses in the ratio of 50:50. There will be no user fee for these roads unlike in other states.
Almost 80% of the work of the 28.12km Kozhikode bypass has been completed so far and only a 5.10km-stretch on the northern end remains to be developed.
The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) will start work on the Thiruvananthapuram bypass stretch (43km) of the national highway leading to Kanyakumari. However, this will be a tolled highway as decided earlier.
“These four bypasses will be completed in a time-bound manner,” Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said after a meeting with Oscar Fernandez, the central surface transport minister, Satyanarayana, his deputy, Kerala’s works minister V K Ebrahim Kunju and other top officials.
The chief minister stressed that his government attached top priority to building road infrastructure. However, he added that the government had not succeeded in acquiring land at the pace needed. Chandy assured that measures were being initiated to expedite land acquisition for road widening in the state.
“We are going ahead with the construction of the roads wherever land acquisition is complete. Bypasses and flyovers will be considered for stretches where land acquisition is near impossible,” he said.
Fernandes agreed that work in Kerala had been delayed for many years because of the high cost of land and density of population. Nearly 40% of the vehicles in the state use the national highways that account for just 1.50% of the total road length.
“The project cost for road development is reasonable but when it comes to land acquisition, it costs a fortune and hence the delay. However, with the state government now agreeing to chip in, things will get quicker,” Fernandes opined.
Commissioning the Alappuzha (13.14km) and Kollam (13.14km) bypasses holds the key to streamlining the traffic along the Chertala-Thiruvananthapuram stretch of the national highway linking the port city of Kochi. “Things are all clear for the work at Kollam and Alappuzha, while at Kozhikode it would take a little more time,” said R P Singh, chairman of the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI).
Besides the four bypasses, the Tripunithura and Thalassery-Mahe bypass are part of the plan to reduce congestion and to make long-distance travel hassle-free.
Chandy had recently announced the SPEED (sustainable and planned effort to ensure development) infrastructure initiative with a total outlay of Rs100bn to take up major road projects. These include flyovers at Edappally, Vyttila, Palarivattom and Kundanoor in Kochi. The work to build a four-lane flyover at Edappally, with the metro’s viaduct running through the centre, was awarded to the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC).