Vehicles headed to and from the Kestopur bridge connecting New Town to Sector V will no longer have to veer to a side while ascending or on descending from the bridge. A 2.2 km long four-lane road is being built on the divider along the southern Major Arterial Road (MAR) that goes towards the bridge from the Biswa Bangla Gate crossing.
Work has already started at the Biswa Bangla Gate end with an excavator scooping out and moving the soil. This is the stretch where the NKDA had undertaken an urban gardening project, growing tuberose and chrysanthemum on two acres of the divider in 2020.
While the clay surface has been leveled till the first U-turn, on the next stretch half the divider has been leveled.
Further up, on other stretches of the road, workers are digging the sides of the divider on both sides to lay the pipelines for stormwater drainage.
A car veers left and speeds down the Kestopur bridge, coming in possible collision course with vehicles coming out from the lane next to the shop in CE Block. The new lanes will avert that possibility.
Sudeshna BanerjeeOffcialspeak
“Our masterplan has the space earmarked for a 10-lane road to be built there. So we would have had to construct the road at some point of time anyway. Now that the bridge is ready, traffic has increased in that direction. The volume will rise exponentially once the elevated corridor that the Public Works Department (PWD) has planned from Chingrihata via Ring Road in Sector V to the mouth of the new six-lane exit from New Town is ready. So we thought of taking up this project,” a Hidco official told The Telegraph Salt Lake.
The 600m four-lane bridge was inaugurated on June 8 last year. The decision to construct the four-lane road and bring the stretch to the standard width of an MAR was hastened by the problems faced after the inauguration by residents in blocks on both sides of the MAR where the bridge starts.
Pipelines being laid for stormwater drainage.
Sudeshna BanerjeeResidents’ concerns
“All our branch roads from inside the block join the main road. But the opening of the bridge has created several hazards for us. In the absence of a service lane, the cars and bikes going out of the block are getting exposed to the high-speed traffic hurtling down the bridge. This is not the case on the MAR where the blocks and housing estates on either side have the cushion of a service lane when they are coming out of the block. An accident is simply waiting to happen,” said Alok Das, a member of New Town CE Block Cultural Association.
Pinaki Dutta Chowdhury, another resident who stays at the edge of Street 210 that leads to the main road, gave voice to the concern on behalf of the block by writing a letter highlighting the problems to The Telegraph Salt Lake. “I can see from home how fast the traffic moves from the bridge especially at night and early in the day. When I wrote the letter, there was not a single signal or speedbreaker at the junction of Street 208, Street 210 and Street 212 where the flyover ends. But soon after The Telegraph Salt Lake published the letter prominently on July 21 last year, the authorities seemed to take note. Speedbreakers were laid within days and after some time, a traffic signal was installed on Street 212,” he said. Both residents expressed satisfaction at the road being widened.
The Hidco official admitted that it was the flagging of the problem by a CE Block resident that made them accelerate the construction. “This was a valid issue being faced by CE Block, which they had raised on a public forum. We need to reduce local traffic versus high-speed traffic conflict. So once the four lanes at the centre are ready, the vehicles from the bridge can continue driving along the straight road and speed off. The existing road at the sides will effectively become a three-lane service road,” the official said.
But one concern that remains for residents of both CE Block and Balaka Abasan on the other side is of pedestrians crossing the MAR once the divider is replaced by a high-speed corridor. An underpass here would help, they point out.
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