The poor street condition on the road beneath the Okalipuram railway bridge and prompting the eight-path corridor has drawn the consideration of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) chief for the third time.
This time, BBMP Commissioner N Manjunatha Prasad has said that with the expanding water seepage and the poor street condition, it has been decided to embrace white topping work on the stretch at the earliest.
Notwithstanding, street engineers said that it can’t be taken up promptly as the eight-path corridor work is inadequate and street construction will hamper the site works. This lone implies that commuters should endure the experience of waterlogging during rainy days.
A BBMP engineer said, “White topping on the stretch is required as the area gets flooded because of the heavy downpour, rising seepage and poor road condition. Concretising the road is the only solution. But it cannot be done now because the flyover work is pending from the BBMP side.
So concretisation will start only towards the end of December.” The BBMP engineers said that their part of the corridor work will be finished by end of December, however the work from the railroads to finish the track-laying works and improving the rail bridge will at present require significant time. This thought has not gone down well with commuters. They point that the project has just been postponed and now the white topping work will just exacerbate the situation.
“The Okalipuram corridor is the only stretch connecting west Bengaluru to city central. Usually there are traffic diversions and road blocks due to some ongoing works. Now, the white topping will only make commuting worse,” said Purushotham, a commuter who has a shop in Cubbonpet.
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