KOCHI: For every arterial road in Kochi, there is a sidekick. A quieter stretch that absorbs the traffic overflow. For the busy Banerji Road, that is Sastha Temple Road.
This 500-metre stretch allows motorists to slip past the bottleneck at Kaloor junction and rejoin the traffic stream closer to Edappally, avoiding signals, traffic snarl-ups and even road rages. But this sidekick has a weak link in its armour. A small, 10-metre bridge. Its weakening has now become the road’s undoing.
“The sides of the culvert are damaged. The bridge, I think, is now held up in part by the roots of a nearby banyan tree,” said Seema Santhosh, a resident.
Kayas, another local resident, said the same. “In some portions of the culvert, large cracks have appeared, and the walls even look detached,” he said.
Reconstruction works are obviously on. “But painfully slow,” Kayas pointed out.
“On some days, only a handful of workers are deployed at the site,” said Prabhas, another resident, who’d stopped at the nearby supermarket for groceries.
Indeed, the work has been dragging on for over a month now, greatly inconveniencing the nearby residents. Large boulders are placed on either end of the bridge to prevent large vehicles from taking it, but two-wheelers slip by. “But not autos,” said Jojo George, an autorickshaw driver.
For ride requests from the other side of the bridge, he has to endure two big signals at Kaloor. “By the time I get there, the ride gets cancelled. So many auto drivers are suffering,” Jojo said.
Businesses on either side, too, have been hit. Siyad, who runs a gym nearby, said, “Because residential flats flank either side of the bridge, the flow of big cars from the two roads gives the impression to motorists that the bridge work is complete, when it is not. Those vehicles are then forced to make a U-turn, creating even more chaos.”
This chaos has eaten up customers who would have otherwise come to nearby shops. “Business has dwindled significantly,” said Uwaise, a shop owner. Further complicating the matter, a KSEB cable has also snapped in the area.
“Now, this repair work has to be fixed before any more construction on the bridge can continue,” said a KSEB worker. “Else, we would have to dig up the bridge sides again,” he warned.
Without this essential cable work, electrification in the area remains dependent on a single feeder. The work is likely to only take a matter of days, but it will be a while before the bridge is ready.
For a road that once rescued Banerji Road from gridlock, Sastha Temple Road now waits for its own relief.