RVNL changes Orange Line stn design as eateries encroach upon pavement
Times of India | 14 September 2024
Kolkata: Pavement encroachment has forced design changes for the Orange Line’s second last station at Chinar Park.
The pavement space has been usurped by at least four restaurants for their outdoor facilities, preventing Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd (RVNL) from creating alternate space for traffic movement. RVNL needs to barricade a 33m × 140m area in the middle of Biswa Bangla Sarani to build the concourse (first level) of the Chinar Park or Rabindra Tirtha Metro station.The platform will be constructed above the concourse.
Bidhannagar Police’s traffic department says it can’t give up such a large space without an alternate space for seamless traffic movement. RVNL has already built two service roads parallel to the airport-bound and New Town-bound flanks. It had planned to widen the service roads by reducing the pavement on either side.
The police then came up with a solution. They said they would allow half the width (16m) of the road to be cordoned off from 11 pm to 5 am and RVNL could split the casting in phases. RVNL’s original plan was to get a 24×7 traffic block for a 33-metre-wide area while traffic was guided through the widened service roads on both flanks. But now they have no option but to agree with the cops to work only at night with only half the space available. This way, the airport-bound flank would be free day and night and the New Town-bound traffic would flow through the service road next to it.
“Instead of casting the concourse at one go, as is the norm, a two-way casting will be done,” said a railways official. Sources said it has taken RVNL months to get all stakeholders on board for this alteration. Initially, the cops had suggested breaking the construction sequence in three phases. Finally, they agreed on the two-phased casting.
What’s more, the encroachment doesn’t leave space for building two of the four accesses to the Metro station. “We have space to build two accesses. No one knows how the other two will be built without removing the encroachment,” an engineer said.
A retired engineer who worked in Delhi Metro said: “A continuous casting is the norm. If someone is doing it otherwise, it may be considered flawed or compromised construction.?”
Afcons Infrastructure is contracted to complete the Rs 533 crore package comprising 3.5 km from City Centre II in New Town to the Airport by Jan 31.