CHENNAI: Relief seems ever elusive to the residents and users of Korukkupet- Cochrane Basin Road as the long delayed construction of a Railway Over Bridge (ROB) and Railway Under Bridge (RUB) has again run into a major delay making its chances of completion increasingly negative.
The project was undertaken by the Corporation with funding under JNNURM. However, the funding was stopped on April 31, leaving the Corporation with nowhere to turn to for accommodating the escalating costs. “The project should have been completed long back, but its feasibility was not properly ascertained in its initial stages which caused a lot of roadblocks during its implementation,” said a senior official of the Corporation.
Delays are nothing new for the half-a-decade old project, which was concieved in 2007 to ease congestion on the crucial highway used mostly by container carriers from Ennore Port. However, work on the 12.2 crore Railway Over Bridge was impeded when a couple of residents went to court over problems regarding land acquisition.
The present soup that the project has landed in has been a consequence of its previous delays and escalating costs, said officials. “We now have to look for alternate modes of funding. There is the possibility of re acquiring funding from JNNURM or we might approach the State Government for funding, but this again will take time and this means further escalation of costs,” they said.
Officials hinted at the possibility of the project being dropped altogether. Blaming the lack of feasibility of the project, a senior official said “The project has been planned such that, without the ROB, we cannot go forward with the RUB. But now with the ROB facing problems, even the RUB, which is near completion, has been halted.”
“The construction of something big always causes many problems, but this is something that has been ‘under construction’ for six years now. Traffic has been re routed a dozen times, MTC bus routes and location of bus stops on this road have been altered frequently. This project has caused many more inconveniences to the residents and the worst part is it doesn’t seem to be getting any better,” said G Ravi, a resident of Tondiarpet.
Yugendran Raja, a resident of Kathivakkam, said “A Railway Over Bridge here has been a long pending demand, however, the authorities could have even left it as it is rather than getting so far ahead into construction and then not completing the project.” With hopes of the residents dashed again, the possibility of this project taking off again seems bleak.
