The residents of Baroda Ghat in Bagbera can heave a sigh of relief following the state road construction department’s (RCD) decision to repair the existing bridge in the area that had worn out and turned into an accident-prone zone.

After repairing the bridge, the RCD will initiate the construction of a 100-metre long flyover on Baroda Ghat-Station road to break the impasse triggered by the railways’ objection to a road project that would have disturbed its network of underground water pipes.

The decision was taken by RCD’s engineer-in-chief R.B. Singh after he paid a visit to the under-construction bridge on Baroda Ghat-Station road recently.

Revealing about the decision, executive engineer of RCD’s Jamshedpur division N. Sahay said the repair would be carried out by the civil contractor who had constructed the Baroda Ghat-Station road.

“The RCD had to take a decision to get the existing bridge repaired on an urgent basis as the local residents, especially legislator Maneka Sardar, were mounting pressure on the department. The repair will approximately cost Rs 19 lakh,” the executive engineer told The Telegraph.

Sahay pointed out that constructing a flyover over the existing bridge was not a simple task.

“We cannot touch the railway pipelines running along the existing bridge. Therefore, the flyover’s design has to be made by a consultant. It is not going to be easy because there is no land available on either side of the existing bridge,” the RCD executive engineer said.

The RCD had raised the height of the 2.5km-long Baroda Ghat-Station road by reconstructing it at a cost of Rs 11 crore a year ago.

However, the construction hit a stumbling block at a small bridge located in the middle of the road after the railways objected to the RCD shifting the three pipes installed for drawing water from the Kharkai river to Tatanagar area.

While undertaking the project, the RCD had planned to increase the height of the bridge by five metres to bring it on a par with the new road's height. But the railways opposed it saying in the layer of soil would make repair of pipelines extremely difficult.

Notably, Baroda Ghat is a densely populated area and the Baroda Ghat-Station road is the only road that connects the locality with Tatanagar station and beyond.