Six years of wait for a smooth drive is not enough for motorists. They may have to face a bumpy ride on the new concrete road over the Ashiana-Rajiv Nagar drain.
The four-lane road, laid over the 1.8-km drain at Rs 23 crore, is likely to be made operational by Tuesday. Though the construction work got over in February this year, it has not been opened to traffic because of encroachment and other issues.
Last Monday, Patna divisional commissioner Anand Kishore had set a week's target to open the road to traffic.
Acting on Kishore's directives, the road construction department and Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) among other agencies have taken a number of steps over the past week to prepare the road for full-fledged movement of vehicles. Electronic traffic signals have been installed at the entry point of the road at Ashiana Mor. LED streetlights are already operational on Ashiana-Digha road.
According to the directive of Kishore, people, who had dumped construction materials on the concrete road, have removed it. Similarly, the road construction department has sealed a number of unwanted openings in the median between the old and the new roads. Initially, openings in the median were made only at four places to allow vehicles enter internal streets on the flanks.
However, the owners of houses adjacent to the road had made around a dozen such openings later for their own convenience.
Though PMC has tried to clean the road by sweeping it, small heaps of soil lie dumped at places, risking a bumpy ride to motorists. Asked whether the dumps would be removed or the road carpeted again, a senior official in the road construction department said: "It is a concrete road. So carpeting or fresh layer of bituminous cannot be put over it."
Autorickshaws parked illegally at the entry of the road at Ashiana Mor blocks the commencement of traffic.
Traffic superintendent of police (SP) P.K. Das, however, claimed that the parking of autos would be stopped at Ashiana Mor and violators would be penalised.
"We would open the Ashiana-Digha road to traffic from September 29," said Das.
