Hyderabad: One hundred and eighty-one trees will progressively be chopped or translocated for the construction of a flyover at the KBR Park entrance junction. At the KBR junction, 77 trees by the road’s side, 24 trees from the median and 80 trees from the park’s side (but outside KBR Park) will be chopped or relocated. Most of these trees are on the HMDA walkway adjoining KBR National Park.
Few of the trees that are on the foundation zones of the flyover’s pillars will have to be chopped down immediately for work to start, informed the GHMC. A district-level tree protection committee has also been formed to ensure a minimum number of trees are affected. The committee, that includes forest officials, urban biodiversity officials from GHMC and NGOs, examined and finalized the permission to cut trees by the GHMC.
The committee, which strongly advocated relocation instead of chopping down trees wherever possible, stated: “Translocation should be done wherever feasible, GHMC should apply these conditions and inform the committee on every major move in the project,” GHMC authorities said that the flyover at the KBR entrance junction was required to remove traffic congestion at the junction and it would also result in a considerable reduction in pollution.
The flyover is also required in view of heavy traffic on this road, which connects the IT corridor with important commercial and residential areas. They have further informed that as per a traffic survey conducted by them, the present traffic volume on the Junction is about 1,02,176 PCU (passenger car Unit) which is likely to go up to 2,23,880 PCU by 2035.
