[1]‘Well begun is half done’ may well betoken the Metro authorities’ concerns at the moment as they have urged their partner agencies to hasten completion of the key projects proposed to decongest the city: commencement of the main metro works without ensuring the first may choke traffic flow.
The infrastructure projects in question are the widening of the south Rail Over-Bridge and the Thammanam-Pullepady Road, besides construction of the Atlantis RoB to be implemented by the corporation and Roads and Bridges Develo-pment Corporation of Kerala Ltd.
“We’ve earlier convened meetings with the agencies when they agreed to hasten the procedures. We plan to again hold another one soon so that the projects vital to decongest MG Road and other stretches in the city may be taken up at the earliest,” a metro official said.
Currently, the Metro board is engaged in updating the Detailed Project Report and exploring ways to overcome the Central Vigilance Commission guidelines, preventing the awarding of the main work to the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation. A decision in this regard is expected to be taken at the next board meeting on October 19.
While land acquisition for the Atlantis RoB project is a vexed issue, the widening of the Thammanam-Pullepady stretch is getting delayed despite landowners being willing to part with their land.
“We’ve hastened the work and will take up the stretch between MG Road and Pullepady first. While 84 landowners agreed to give us land, land has to be provided by the remaining nearly 80 land owners. We would require an additional Rs25 crore apart from the `25 crore that the state has provided us,” said town planning committee chairman K. J. Sohan.
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