Title - End of the road for Lucky restaurant

Another one bites the dust. Lucky restaurant, a favourite hang out for many citizens in the past, is being razed.Though it has been a while since the eating joint, well known for the ubiquitous biryani besides the regular Irani café stuff like tea-biscuits, small samosas etc - was shut, it did revive some old memories as the structure was pulled down to facilitate road widening on Thursday.The erstwhile café along with five other properties were taken over by the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) as part of its long standing plan to widen the space on the left splay of the congested junction leading to the Lakdikapul road over bridge.The site has become major traffic bottleneck in the last few years because of the delay in taking up the second bridge atop the railway tracks beneath beside the old one.

Bridge nearing completion
The new bridge constructed jointly by the municipal corporation and the South Central Railway (SCR) is nearing completion.Roads leading to the new bridge on both sides too are getting ready.While the land belonging to the Intelligence Wing was taken over long time ago, the civic body has managed to pay compensation to the property owners on the other side after many months of delay, awaiting the standing committee clearance and the government. “We are also planning to acquire five to six properties after the Lakdikapul junction to widen the main road so that there is a uniform width of 120 ft. Public representatives too have agreed to the proposal as the road for a small stretch is about 70 ft on either side,” explained Additional Commissioner (Planning & Projects) K. Dhananjaya Reddy.

GHMC had originally made plans to widen the road from NMDC junction to S.D. Eye Hospital uniformly for 120 ft. The width on this stretch varies between 80ft-100 ft and the work was proposed to tackle the expected increased flow of traffic on the road once the P.V.N.R. Expressway was thrown open. It did not happen for various reasons including funds crunch and continues to be put on hold.