The Behala-bound flank of the Taratala flyover was closed for several hours on Sunday morning as the PWD took up urgent repairs to fill a pothole that was detected the previous night.
“The flank was closed between 5am and 9am on Sunday in the first phase as PWD officials assessed the situation,” said an officer of the Kolkata police’s traffic department.
The pothole was cordoned off with guardrails and some concrete chunks were laid on it, he said.
Police said they allowed light vehicles on the flank from 9am till noon, when traffic was again suspended because of repairs.
“Normal traffic resumed on the flank around 3.30pm, after the repairs were over,” the officer said.
“Luckily this happened on a Sunday, when the volume of traffic is usually less. It would have been very challenging had the pothole developed on a weekday.”
Behala-bound vehicles were diverted through Diamond Harbour Road, below the flyover, during the period the flank was closed.
Senior PWD officials said the pothole, adjacent to expansion joints on the Behala-bound flank of the flyover, had been repaired with concrete filling a few weeks ago. A team, however, detected on Saturday night that the filling had come off.
“There is no problem with the main structure of the Taratala flyover. A safety audit of the structure was recently conducted and no problem was detected,” said a PWD official. “The pothole filling had come off because of the movement of heavy vehicles. It has been repaired thoroughly.”
The Taratala flyover is among the few through which trucks ply.
It had been shut a few weeks back to facilitate repairs by the PWD to fix a crater that had surfaced close to expansion joints on the Behala-bound flank.
“This pothole (the one detected on Saturday night) was also covered with concrete mix. But the cover came off and it has been repaired once again. There are no issues with the flyover right now," the official said.
Thousands of vehicles ply through the Taratala flyover that connects Taratala to parts of south Kolkata. In 2019, the PWD had shredded several inches of bitumen and concrete layer from the carriageway of the flyover to reduce its weight and to make it more sustainable.
Addition of layers of bitumen over the decades is believed to be one of the reasons that led to the collapse of the Majerhat bridge in September 2018.