Seaport-Airport Road widening turns a damp squib

PWD unable to widen Bharat Matha College-Irumpanam stretch of Seaport-Airport Road due to lack of funds; RBDCK had widened only 2.5-km Kalamassery-BM College stretch.

Even as a notification on acquiring land for the airport extension of Seaport-Airport Road is slated for publication on September 30, the Public Works department (PWD) is hamstrung by non-allocation of funds to widen the bottlenecked and accident-prone Bharat Matha College-Irumpanam stretch of the road.

This has resulted in much of the land that had been acquired at 30-metre width by Roads and Bridges Development Corporation of Kerala (RBDCK) over two decades ago, either getting weed infested and lying idle or encroached upon.

The RBDCK that handed over the 11.5-km road to PWD in 2020, had widened only the 2.5-km Kalamassery-BM College stretch. The RBDCK’s role is now limited to executing the corridor’s airport extension, while the PWD has been unable to widen rest of the narrow but busy corridor that is used daily by a few thousand lorries that carry fuel and other hazardous cargo, containers, and other goods.

The width of the narrow stretch has been further reduced due to ill-maintained road shoulders and the subsequent erosion of the tarred portion. Apart from slowing down vehicles, this has been causing accidents on the ill-lit corridor where visibility is further hampered by overgrowth of weeds. It peaked in December last when three people were killed in accidents within a week. This was in addition to a lorry that was carrying 40,000 litres of ethanol tilting towards the side after its driver miscalculated the road’s width.

Official sources spoke of how the State government has been ignoring the corridor that ran parallel to Edapally-Aroor NH 66 Bypass. While its airport extension is plagued by delays, little effort has gone into ensuring its seaport extension, with the result that the road culminates at Karingachira in Thripunithura.

Even worse, the government has not allotted funds to widen the congested Collectorate Junction and to build an overbridge there, despite the PWD and the Motor Vehicles department (MVD) submitting reports in this regard. The MVD had suggested pushing back of the compound wall of the Collectorate by five metres.