A Metro pillar will be built at the centre of the Chingrighata intersection on EM Bypass for the New Garia-Airport Metro railway corridor after the 45th International Kolkata Book Fair ends on March 13, officers in the urban development department said.
The “pillar number 318” is key to holding the Metro viaduct that takes a curve from Chingrighata and moves into Salt Lake from EM Bypass.
Since the pillar will take up around four square metre in the middle of the busy intersection on EM Bypass, the state government has asked the railway authorities to take some measures like increase the footpath space, put in place necessary signs and increase the road space to avoid traffic congestion.
Senior Metro officials said the construction of the pillar was held up for years with the urban development department maintaining that it would hamper the traffic movement and the Metro authorities insisting that pillar was necessary to hold the curved viaduct.
In 2020, a team of engineers from IIT Kharagpur confirmed that the pillar was essential but then the pandemic set in. “A final trial of the traffic movement in mid-February this year — by covering up nearly 12 metres of either flanks of EM Bypass at Chingrighata — has revealed that the peak-hour vehicular flow can be managed if some widening of the road is carried out,” said a senior official of the KMDA that maintains EM Bypass on behalf of the state urban development department.
Railway officials said they would want to take up construction of two pillars simultaneously — at the Chingrighata intersection and one at the auto rickshaw stand near Sukantanagar on the east of the intersection. “A small part of the second pillar has been constructed already. We need to start constructing the two pillars simultaneously to ensure accurate turn of the Metro viaduct,” said a senior RVNL official.