The 1.164-km Kamalgazi flyover on the southern fringe of the Bypass was thrown open to traffic on Wednesday, but encroachments beyond either end of the elevated corridor have defeated the purpose for which it was built.

The Rs 84-crore flyover runs over the busy Kamalgazi crossing, the intersection of the Bypass and NS Road that leads to Narendrapur, Rajpur and Baruipur. The flyover terminates on the Baruipur Bypass, running parallel to NS Road.

The flyover, inaugurated by chief minister Mamata Banerjee, might reduce the snarls at the Kamalgazi crossing but the promise of a smooth journey from the Bypass to Rajpur or Baruipur won't be fulfilled because the Baruipur Bypass still isn't ready.

Encroachments on the Bypass and strips of privately owned land that the government took a long time in purchasing have delayed its completion, sources in the Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) said.

A Metro report published on September 14 last year had highlighted how a flyover ready for traffic was lying unused because of the incomplete Baruipur Bypass. Construction has since resumed but the road is unlikely to be ready anytime soon.

Till then, Baruipur-bound vehicles taking the flyover would run into a roadblock after travelling 2.1km to reach a place called Rathtala. The flank beyond Rathtala is blocked. "Vehicles need to take either NS Road or switch to the Calcutta-bound flank of the Baruipur Bypass from Rathtala. The other flank is ready from a point 3km south of Rathtala," said a CMDA engineer.

The problem points include a one-kilometre stretch south of Rathtala that was occupied by 157 families until last December. For the other flank, the South 24-Parganas district administration has had to buy seven acres from private owners. "The land deals took up some time," the CMDA official said.

Work may have resumed but nobody in the CMDA could say with certainty when the entire Baruipur Bypass would be ready. "We plan to open stretches of the road in phases," the official said.

The last stretch of the EM Bypass, from the Shahid Khudiram Metro station till the flyover, has encroachments too. The south-bound flank is blocked at one place and vehicles have to switch over to the other flank, which slows down the pace of traffic.

The south-bound flank hasn't been completed because some settlers have refused to vacate the land, a problem common to Metro projects across the city. Government officials said these settlers had already been compensated but they were refusing to leave without some additional payments or land elsewhere.

A member of one of these families told Metro that the CMDA had promised six cottahs close to the Metro station. "We were given Rs 50,000 for one cottah, which is much lower than the market price of land in this area. If they give us land elsewhere as they had promised to, we will leave," said Shyamali Das.

Infrastructure projects in Calcutta have always faced problems like these mainly because of poor planning.

The Parama flyover, conceived in 2005, was to have four arms for dispersal of traffic around an elevated rotary at Park Circus to ensure that a swarm of cars didn't descend on the seven-point crossing all at once. But the plan was shelved because the government wanted to save between Rs 150 and Rs 200 crore, which was the estimated cost of the rotary.

The delay in completing the flyover because of land-related disputes ended up adding more than Rs 150 crore to the original project cost, minus the rotary.

The Parama flyover is now a one-way flyover except at night because of unmanageable snarls at the Park Circus crossing.