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The State government will take up with the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) the need to decongest the 16-km Edappally-Aroor NH 66 Bypass corridor, Minister for Public Works and Tourism P.A. Mohamed Riyas said here on Saturday.
He was responding to concerns about the busy but largely four-lane corridor which caters for inter-State, inter-district and intra-city motorists becoming a choking point when the Edappally-Guruvayur stretch located north of it was widened as a six-lane stretch and a 13-km elevated highway was built on the Aroor-Thuravur stretch located south of the NH Bypass, by 2025.
The NHAI is yet to finalise the plan mooted to build an elevated highway on the 16-km Edappally-Aroor stretch which has four flyovers, although traffic snarls are the norm, the worst among them being the 8-km-long snarl on the Edappally-Thykoodam stretch earlier this month.
The matter pertaining to the need to decongest the stretch will be included in the agenda of items to be discussed with NHAI officials during a meeting scheduled for the coming week. Similarly, problems posed by beggars, alcoholics, and others who have been camping beneath the Vyttila flyover will be taken up with the District Collector, Mr. Riyas said.
Going back in time, he said the widening of NH 66 that ran from one end of the State to the other was caught in a stalemate till 2015 since the Centre was reluctant to fund the entire project. The project gained traction in 2016 after the LDF government agreed to provide 25% of the cost of land acquisition, which worked out to approximately ₹5,600 crore. Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari was very positive to the project, while meetings with officials of the NHAI and other departments are being held every fortnight to review the progress of works.
Interestingly, neither the sprawling unused space beneath the six-lane flyovers at Vyttila and Kundannur (where many used vehicles are left abandoned) did not figure in the pilot projects announced as part of the ‘design policy’ jointly undertaken by the PWD and Kerala Tourism to make optimal use of spaces beneath bridges to host sports activities in order to prevent them becoming a den for anti-social activities.
Fort Kochi
Mr. Riyas said the PWD rest house on the Fort Kochi beach front would be renovated, while the introduction of online booking for such rest houses spread across the State had helped garner more revenue. When asked about the reasons for Kerala Tourism’s delay in restoring the beach that was vulnerable to sea erosion and its dilapidated walkway, he said it would be executed in tandem with departments (like Irrigation department) that had been vested with its implementation, so that the beach wore a better look before the onset of the impending tourist season.
