Widening of congested Seaport-Airport Road remains a distant dream

Widening of congested Seaport-Airport Road into four-lane corridor delayed, causing traffic snarls and accidents, despite heavy usage.

The widening of the congested, accident-prone Seaport-Airport Road into a four-lane corridor remains a distant dream, despite its heavy traffic of passenger and goods vehicles heading to the Infopark, IT establishments, collectorate, Kochi Refinery, and other industrial units.

The Roads and Bridges Development Corporation of Kerala (RBDCK), which acquired land at 30-m-width developed the 16-km-long Seaport-Airport Road in 2004 and handed it over to the PWD (Roads wing) in 2019. This followed the completion of the four-lane stretch from HMT Junction to Bharata Matha College. However, over the past five years, bottlenecks, including the narrow and unsafe carriageway at Collectorate Junction, remain unaddressed, causing considerable difficulty for commuters crossing the road, said a senior Motor Vehicles department (MVD) official.

Concerned by the delay in widening the remaining 12-km-long Bharata Matha College-Irumpanam corridor and accidents caused by the glaring level difference between the tarred carriageway and the road shoulder, the MVD had directed the PWD (Roads wing) in October to raise the shoulders on both sides of the entire 16-km stretch to the same level as the carriageway.

“Neither of the works – raising the road shoulder height using paver blocks or mud, nor the widening of the road – have been completed, leading to worsening traffic snarls and an increase in accidents on the crucial stretch. It is used daily by hundreds of tanker lorries carrying fuel, chemicals, and other hazardous cargo,” said M.S. Anilkumar, general convenor of the Thrikkakara Development Forum (TDF), which has been spearheading the campaign to improve road infrastructure in the region.

Despite previous assurances, the State government failed to allocate funds for widening the road, leaving much of the 30-metre-wide land acquired over 20 years ago unused. The least the government and the PWD could have done over the past five years was raise the road shoulder, widen junctions and take steps to improve visibility, streamline traffic flow, and prevent accidents. The situation was expected to worsen as more sections of the road would be barricaded for the Kakkanad extension of the metro, he said.

Sources in RBDCK said the PWD should have provided an estimate earlier and sought administrative sanction to widen the road, as there was no need to acquire additional land.

Responding to the worsening situation on the road, PWD sources said little could be done unless the State government set apart at least 20% of the estimate for road widening and the construction of a flyover at Collectorate Junction in the Budget. “This will ensure administrative sanction for the project. As for raising the road shoulder, work has begun from the Irumpanam side under a ₹22 lakh project. The remaining low-lying shoulders will also be raised in the coming weeks. Visibility can be improved if local bodies install street lights and clear weeds from the road kerb,” they added.