Title - Growing demand for rebuilding South RoB

Kochi: There is a growing demand for rebuilding the South railway overbridge though the Kochi Metro Rail Ltd has not included widening of the bridge in the list of preparatory works of Kochi metro.

The suggestion to rebuild the overbridge was debated over by the participants of a recent meeting convened by KMRL to discuss the key infrastructure projects to be taken up along with metro works to minimise traffic bottlenecks in the city. Local residents and urban planners demand that the overbridge be widened soon as once the metro rail lines are completed in this area, the bridge can never be reconstructed.

“There is an urgent need to widen the South RoB as traffic flow has been increasing every year. With new roads like Ambedkar Marg connecting Thevara to Panampilly Nagar, traffic has increased over the bridge.

If KMRL is not willing to take up the project, it should be handed over to agencies like Kerala Road Fund Board or Roads and Bridges Development Corporation of Kerala as the corporation may not be able to undertake it,” said Gopakumar, president of the Better Kochi Response Group.

Though there was a proposal to widen the overbridge into four lanes, side by side with the metro work, it didn’t materialise. The corporation had earlier requested KMRL to take up the project. The DMRC had done a soil test to inspect the feasibility of widening the overbridge.

Earlier, KMRL had put forward a proposal to the Railways and the state government saying that that once the viaduct was constructed, no reconstruction would be possible and hence it was the right time to consider rebuilding the RoB along with the metro project.

However, disapproving the demand for widening the overbridge, a civic administrator said that with the opening of other railway overbridges, traffic flow through the South RoB would be diverted through alternate routes. “As widening of bridges and roads is difficult in the city where land is scarce, proper management of traffic and encouraging public transport would be more effective,” he said.