HYDERABAD: The Rs 263 crore flyover cum underpass project at Kothaguda is slated to provide a 70%-100% traffic solutions to the three dense points of Botanical Garden, Kothaguda and Kondapur junctions. The 3km flyover as per the plan will be a unidirectional one with entry points from Gachibowli road and from Botanical garden road with exists at Hitech city road and near Hafeezpet. It will cater to traffic coming in from Gachibowli toward Hafeezpet and also help the traffic skip the Kothaguda junction and alight on the Hitech city road ahead of Google campus. Additionally, for the traffic coming in from Hafeezpet side towards Gachibowli, to help them skip the traffic at Kothaguda, the officials have planned a unidirectional underpass.
The project is an ambitious one note SRDP officials as it will help in mitigating traffic at the densified corridor is west part of the city that also connects to the central part, helping create a network of SRDP projects that will clear traffic across a 21km stretch seamlessly.
As per the project plan, it will clear 7231, 9332 and 5482 vehicles from Botanical Garden, Kothaguda and Kondapur junction respectively as on 2019.
However, worries are being raised as to whether the flyover cum underpass project will see a situation like Raheja Mindspace where the unprecedented growth at the Mindspace IT park has put an immense burden on road projects at grade level for local traffic.
Experts note this is because the SRDP projects are essentially being planned to keep in mind speed and obstacle-free travel for long distance thoroughfare by lifting the vehicles onto a barrier-free flyover, than the ease of the local travel at ground level. In Raheja, the local travel turned to grow much more than the long-distance travel, putting immense pressure on the ground level infrastructure. So can traffic increase that way at Kothaguda?
Experts note it is possible. Senior officials from SRDP inform that at present long-distance travel constitutes close to 60-70% of the travel at the three junctions covered in this project. In the next 15 years the total traffic will almost be double and SRDP plans to accommodate the same.
However, critics are asking how will the road on the ground carry the local traffic who won't use the flyover and constitute close to 30-40%? “The flyover project can be of optimum use if there is a bulk traffic coming from point of origin of the flyover to the point it ends. However in case of Kothaguda there are several residential, semi-commercial and commercial setups that will be running below the flyover who will attract their own sizeable traffic,” noted Professor Dr KM Lakshmana from the Civil Engineering department in JNTUH.
He further noted that even when flyover works are over, under the flyover, the ‘Right of Way’ or the present road at the ground level will continue to have the existing several irregularities with no set-back spaces given. These irregularities cause the ‘Right of Way’ to be shrunk dramatically. “Several establishments have the entrance right on the road, so if one customer or resident comes in, he will use one lane of the at-ground road and reduce Right of Way for other localised traffic. The SRDP must strictly remove such encroachments and violations on the RoW to help the local traffic who will be left with just the existing road,” he added.
That said, on paper, the plan gets a big nod from the experts. “There are several ways to overcome traffic and this method which segregates slow and fast traffic has worked well for countries like Taiwan and Singapore to ease traffic and improve speed and reduce pollution. However the planning needs to be on point with use of traffic simulation of this particular place incorporated at the planning stage to get it perfectly correct,” added NV Ramana, Director of NIT Warangal.
Tough task for SRDP ahead
HYDERABAD: It would be a tough task ahead for the SRDP officials to execute the 3km long multi-level flyover cum underpass project at Kothaguda junction, as a whooping 40 land acquisitions need to be done for the project to play out the way it is planned.
The 40 properties to be acquired include land from TSSPDCL and Botanical Garden’s reserve forest area. As per the plan of the SRDP, the major reserve forest at Masjid Banda which is of 270 acres size will see a substantial chunk taken away for the project. As per senior officials from SRDP, a 20 meter wide stretch of about 200 meters length from the Botanical garden junction to where the flyover lands will be taken for the project.
These acquisitions are critical because even if one of them is missed then it would be difficult to complete the project on time as seen in the case of Biodiversity multi-level flyover which is hung up for months only due to 2 land acquisition cases which have landed in the court.
Officials add that though end of 2020 is the slated completion date, subject to when these land acquisitions are complete, the project can get further delayed, much to the difficulty to local commuters.
One of the critical points at present, a tree and shrine just before leading upto the Kothaguda junction will also be removed, note officials to ease the pressure on localised traffic.
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