BENGALURU : The poor road condition on the road below the Okalipuram railway bridge and leading to the eight-lane corridor has drawn the attention of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) chief for the third time.
This time, BBMP Commissioner N Manjunatha Prasad has said that with the increasing water seepage and the poor road condition, it has been decided to undertake white topping work on the stretch at the earliest.
However, road engineers said that it cannot be taken up immediately as the eight-lane corridor work is incomplete and road construction will hamper the site works. This only means that commuters will have to suffer the ordeal of waterlogging during rainy days.
A BBMP engineer said, “White topping on the stretch is required as the area gets flooded because of the heavy downpour, rising seepage and poor road condition. Concretising the road is the only solution. But it cannot be done now because the flyover work is pending from the BBMP side.
So concretisation will start only towards the end of December.” The BBMP engineers said that their part of the corridor work will be completed by end of December, but the work from the railways to complete the track-laying works and improving the rail bridge will still take time. This idea has not gone down well with commuters. They point that the project has already been delayed and now the white topping work will only make matters worse.
“The Okalipuram corridor is the only stretch connecting west Bengaluru to city central. Usually there are traffic diversions and road blocks due to some ongoing works. Now, the white topping will only make commuting worse,” said Purushotham, a commuter who has a shop in Cubbonpet.
Another commuter, Chengappa, a salesman, said: “Already riding through city roads, even in the Unlock period, has become a mess, because of many infrastructure works going on across the city. Now white topping on this stretch will shrink the road width and again there will be delays in the already delayed flyover work.”