MURINJAPALAM BRIDGE

MURINJAPALAM BRIDGE

The Rs.3.75-crore four-lane bridge at Murinjapalam on the busy Pattom-Medical College-Ulloor corridor in the capital will be ready for commissioning by June.The project was taken up under the City Road Improvement Project (CRIP). “The 17-metre-wide bridge will be ready for commissioning on June 3, 200 days after works on the bridge started,” Anilkumar Pandala, associate vice-president of Thiruvananthapuram Road Development Company Ltd. (TRDCL) and concessionaire of CRIP in the capital, told.

The Kerala Road Fund Board (KRFB) and CRIP officials had assured K. Muraleedharan, MLA, in August last year that the new bridge would be completed in 200 days of commencement of work. The work on the bridge, with a 21-metre span, has been completed. The bitumen surfacing of the bridge will be done on May 25. The approach slab of the bridge has already been concreted. Work on the Pottakuzhi-Murinjapalam stretch, one of the approaches to the bridge, will be taken up within a week and on the Ulloor-Murinjapalam road, the other approach, will be completed by the month-end. Project officials said they were trying to complete the work on the Murinjapalam-Kumarapuram stretch along with this. Although the Kerala Water Authority and other user agencies have completed the works on the stretch, authorities are worried over the delay in laying the sewage line from the Murinjapalam junction to the bridge. Project officials are worried whether the work will be completed before the surfacing work is taken up.

The bridge is on corridor IX of CRIP, extending from Pattom to Ulloor, via Pottakuzhi, Murinjapalam, and Medical College. The bridge will have footpaths of 1.5 m on both sides for safe movement of pedestrians. The road from Pattom to Murinjapalam will not be fully developed when the new bridge is opened as issues over the medians on the stretch have to be resolved. The work on the bridge was delayed due to a host of problems, including the Assembly elections, Onam celebrations, and the problems in shifting utility lines.

                                          Prof. John Kurakar