Kolkata: The Orange Line overcame its most difficult hurdle and managed to bridge the 62m viaduct gap atop the busy Chingrighata crossing early on Sunday.
Making full use of the continuous day-night block since Friday night, RVNL was able to place 12 concrete pieces across the 34m viaduct gap between piers 318 and 319 around 7 am on Sunday. Work at this congested EM Bypass intersection was stalled since Feb 2, 2025, as Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd (RVNL), implementing the New Garia-Airport corridor (Orange Line), pleaded with Kolkata Police to shut the crossing and allow traffic to move through a 500m-long road built by it.
Sources said the the Garia-bound flank, shut from 8.30 pm on Friday will be opened to traffic at 5am on Monday three hours ahead of schedule, said cops
With the new BJP govt at the helm, a continuous 60-hour traffic block was granted by the cops in two phases over the two weekends. Before that, prodded by the high court and Supreme Court, Kolkata Police agreed to 27-hour traffic blocks over two weekend nights. RVNL furnished an IIT-Guwahati report that pointed at compromises in constructional stability and safety hazards if work was left half done at night and traffic moved during the day.
Phase I of the Orange Line's viaduct, on which tracks are laid, was completed and the eastern flank of Chingrighata crossing opened two-and-a-half hours ahead of time last Monday. Like last weekend, RVNL engineers, led by chief project manager Vipin Kumar, who is also the executive director, stayed put at Chingrighata through the night, watching Phase II being executed.
The concrete segments were first aligned and glue applied. Three hours later, as glue hardened, work to tie the concrete segments with steel strands went on for around six hours, following which stressing, pulling the strands to the maximum, began.