Vijayawada: Kanakadurga flyover construction delay troubles school kids

Vijayawada: Since the past four days, the three areas that connect the capital city to the Telangana districts seem to have been completely isolated from the capital city. 

School-going children, employees working in both the private and public sectors and the daily wage labourers from Kummaripalem, Bhavanipuram and Vidyadharapuram are forced to walk it out from Ravi Chettu Centre to Ratham Centre, to catch a city bus or an autorickshaw to reach their destinations. 

The seemingly unending works of the Kanakadurga flyover has imposed these hardships on them and it may not end till the completion of the flyover in March 2018.

“Even RTC buses coming from Hyderabad and other Telangana districts have to wait for the directions of the traffic police before they can proceed,” said a RTC driver of the Amaravati class, from Hyderabad to Vijayawada.

The Chief Minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu, had given an assurance that the four-lane roads beneath the flyover, would be completed before the end of the Krishna Pushkaralu that took place a year ago. “It is almost 20 months since the construction of flyover beg-an,” said Dasu Manem-ma, a resident of Vidya-dharapuram, and he was amazed at the move of the government of not even permitting two-wheelers on the roads connecting Ratham Centre from Gollapudi and Ibrahimpatnam.

The flyover construction is confined to a two-and-a-half km distance, and it is aimed at addre-ssing the bottleneck on the Hyderabad-Kolkata highway. SOMA constructions were given the contract and so far there seems to be no appreciable improvement in the situation. Union minister Gadkari had laid the foundation stone for this project in December 2015.

Mr Naidu had fixed the deadline for the completion of the flyover on December 2015. 

The CM had stated in the first quarter of the year that it would be completed by August 2017. But recently he said it would be completed by the end of the year.

In fact, the state government has not been able to acquire the necessary funds from the Union government as a result of which only 58 per cent of the project has been completed so far. This has affected the residents of five divisions under the VMC limits.

While traffic hazards are increasing day by day, the half-km distance has been extended to five km, for the vehicular traffic wanting to enter the city. This causes traffic jams at Road under Caves (RuC) and at the Chanumolu Venkata Rao (CVR) flyover.

Following the inordinate delay in carrying out the flyover construction works, the National Highway has narrowed down between Sri Kanakadurga Temple, Rajagopuram and River Krishna.