A 17m box bridge might reduce the daily traffic congestion at the Chinar Park crossing in the evening. Or so the authorities hope.
Construction has just started on the box bridge for which an inauguration ceremony was held on November 8, that was attended by local MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar and MLA Tapash Chatterjee, among others.
“People of Hatiara will no longer have to come to Nawpara to reach New Town. The traffic jam at Nawpara spills over to Loknath Temple area all the way to Chinar Park crossing,” said Md. Aftabuddin, a member of the North 24-Parganas Zilla Parishad.
All the political leaders attending the inauguration agreed that the project was the result of the perseverance of Md. Sirajul Haque, the councillor of Ward 13. “This bridge is the dream of all the people of Ward 13. Over 1,000 bighas of land of what is now New Town belonged to the ancestors of the current residents of Hatiara and had been acquired from them. But the area did not even have road connectivity with New Town. They lay in darkness under the lamp,” Haque told The Telegraph Salt Lake. “Now they will have a direct motorable link to Eco Park and the Titumir Metro station being built on the New Garia-Airport line.”
The box bridge is coming up over a feeder canal that drains out the water from the New Town side adjoining Eco Park and from the opposite Nawpara and Hatiara side to the Bagjola canal. Filled so long with water hyacinths, the canal has a rickety bamboo bridge connecting both sides which looks too fragile to support even a bicycle. Nor is it wide enough for two people to pass side by side.
Hidco has commissioned the work and a contractor’s team is clearing the water hyacinths from the water surface. “The plan is to block the flow of water both upstream and downstream, and divert the flow through a pipe. There will be five pillars that will support the box bridge and we need the canal bed to dry up to erect the pillars,” said Aurabinda Burman of Burman Associates which has got the contract for the Rs 1.35 crore project.
The box bridge will be 17m long and 10m wide and have footpaths on both sides of the 7m carriageway. It is situated next to the Border Security Force South Bengal head quarter next to Ram Temple and behind the space allocated for Silicon Valley. It can be approached from the Major Arterial Road by taking the road flanked by Eco Park Gate 4 and 5 to the left and Silicon Valley to the right. This is the road that meets the Ram Temple up front. One has to turn right at the roundabout named Silicon Valley More at this point.
The authorities hope to complete the bridge by next monsoon.
“We face terrible traffic jam from 6pm to 8pm. Barely 300m ahead of the Chinar Park crossing, the road is partially blocked due to Metro Rail work. The congestion starts from the traffic signal just ahead of City Centre 2,” said Debjoy Biswas, a software professional who works in Sector V and stays in Teghoria, near the Loknath temple.
But he is skeptical how many people would use the bridge. “The connecting roads on the Nawpara-Hatiara side are very narrow. So people of Rajarhat and Baguiati would continue to use the Chinar Park crossing. People of Hatiara already have the option of using the Hatiara connection to the MAR which is closer to them than the Chinar Park crossing. Let’s see how the new bridge helps,” he said.