Urban Journal: Elevated Bagjola Canal Road at Jatragachi

Sunday, May 7, 2017

Elevated Bagjola Canal Road at Jatragachi

Elevated Bagjola Canal Road at Jatragachhi

As you cross Hidco Bhavan and Convention Centre Site, you cross the Bagjola Canal across a short bridge while going towards Airport. On both sides of the Canal, on the northern bank, there is a Canal Bank road that runs through densely populated regions. Vehicles, three wheelers etc ply regularly, crossing the Biswa Bangla Sarani. There is a traffic police signal that stops vehicles to allow crossing of the Major Road.

To minimize traffic criss-cross and thus to reduce accidents, a flyover was thought of. Instead of elevation the 10 lane MAR, it was considered economical to elevate the east-west canal road instead. However, the connection could not be made across the MAR since long because the Metro line is aligned to go along the MAR too and so three levels would be required to segregate transport corridors: the MAR, the elevated canal bank road and the elevated metro railway track. The climbing capability of metro rail, the headroom of roads and the challenge of doing the erection of the elevated stretch with a "live" fast traffic on MAR posed challenges that could not be solved easily.
After a detailed study by an expert group, the dimensions were frozen and it was decided to use steel structures rather than concrete structures for the central portion of the flyover. A central pillar was constructed on the central median of MAR so that one-side traffic could flow even while erection works were to take place on the other flank.
To cause minimum problems, the shutdowns were taken at night times of two weekend-evenings. Works started from 10 pm last Friday and continued throughout the night on one stretch. Same thing was repeated next evening and today Sunday morning at 5 am the steel girders had been safely lifted on both flanks. Now remnant works on bearing, decking and joining will go on without disturbing the traffic on MAR. I expect the flyover to be operational by August.