E-Paper
Expressway a planning blunder?
THE 22-KILOMETRE stretch of the elevated expressway, Shaheed Path, could turn into a nightmare for residents of Gomti Nagar Extension. Reason: The expressway that runs right down the middle of the Gomti Nagar dividing it into a half provides no cross-over access to the allottees of sector 1, 4, 5 and 6 of the extension housing scheme.
Nightmare in the making for residents
THE 22-KILOMETRE stretch of the elevated expressway, Shaheed Path, could turn into a nightmare for residents of Gomti Nagar Extension. Reason: The expressway that runs right down the middle of the Gomti Nagar dividing it into a half provides no cross-over access to the allottees of sector 1, 4, 5 and 6 of the extension housing scheme.
“In the absence of underpasses, the residents of these sectors would have to make a long detour (around 10 kilometre) to reach their homes,” said a senior LDA official.
According to him, this access-control highway part of the East-West corridor of the prestigious Golden Quadrilateral project of National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) is one of the biggest planning blunders.
Starting from Viram Khand in Gomti Nagar, the Rs 200-crore expressway would link the Faizabad Road with Kanpur Road and is expected to be complete by March 2007. “Considering the hardships and chaos that the project would cause to the scheme’s residents, we took up the issue with the NHAI officials and suggested construction of a clover leaf flyover to tackle the problem. But they turned down the proposal,” pointed out the official. Here, it is pertinent to mention that the NHAI has given several underpasses not only to the inhabitants of villages along the expressway but also for the Vrindavan housing scheme of the UP Housing and Development Board.
“For instance, the location where we are demanding an underpass for our 45-metre wide road is hardly 150-metre away from the spot where the NHAI has granted access to the inhabitants of Malesemau village, informed the LDA official. The development agency had even offered to bear the additional cost (around Rs 2 to 2.5 crore) for doing the needful. But the NHAI refused to budge.
The refusal would cost LDA dear. As the only option then available to the development agency would be to build an over-bridge/flyover at the spot expected to cost around Rs 18 crore.
While NHAI project director MK Jain, who has just taken over the job, was not available for comments another official on condition of anonymity said the LDA had woken up too late. “It is virtually impossible for us now to consider any such request when the expressway is nearing completion,” he said. He said the estimated height of the expressway at the point where the LDA was demanding an underpass was around 3.5 to 4 metre making it impractical to allow any access there. The development regulator, he said, now had no choice but to build an over-bridge to gain access to its scheme.
