With decks being cleared to acquire land from the Naval Armament Depot (NAD) and HMT, stakeholders are hopeful that the 6-km NAD-Mahilalayam stretch of Seaport-Airport Road can be completed by 2026 and the 4-km Mahilalayam/Aluva-Chowara stretch by 2027.
It will, in turn, lead to realising the long-overdue airport extension of Seaport-Airport Road, a project that began two decades ago. The Roads and Bridges Development Corporation of Kerala (RBDCK), that had been tasked with the road’s development, was hamstrung due to non-allocation of sufficient funds by consecutive governments.
“While the completion of the road’s airport extension would help establish a link with NH 544, the road would have to be linked to the proposed greenfield Kochi-Theni stretch of NH 85 that is set to begin from Nettoor on Edappally-Aroor NH Bypass, in order to establish connectivity to Kochi port. The earlier plan was to link the southern end of Seaport-Airport Road with Thripunithura Bypass which is now caught in red tape, in order to link it with the existing NH 85 corridor,” said sources.
The impending link with NH 544 on the northern end and with the proposed greenfield Kochi-Theni stretch of NH 85 on the southern end would ultimately bring about the seamless and much-awaited direct connectivity between the airport and the seaport, serving the road’s purpose.
The Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board (KIIFB) had earlier this year assured funds for the NAD-Mahilalayam stretch of the Seaport-Airport Road, ₹618 crore for land acquisition and ₹103 crore for constructing the stretch. The acquisition of land for the purpose is in its final stage. The road through NAD and HMT could be readied in a year, sources said.
The road’s airport extension got an impetus with NAD deciding to hand over 2.50 hectares of its land for the project earlier this month. Subsequently, the Supreme Court, in an interim order permitted the handing over of 1.63 hectares of land in possession of HMT to the RBDCK. It will have to be done after the RBDCK deposited ₹16.34 crore for the HMT land in a nationalised bank.
Meanwhile, the Public Works department (Roads wing), that took over the existing stretch of the Seaport-Airport Road from the RBDCK in 2020, will have to speedily complete the widening of the extremely congested Bharata Mata College-Irumpanam stretch of the road, in order to ensure fast and safe transit of passenger and goods vehicles on the road. Both the RBDCK and the PWD had been unable to complete four-laning of the corridor, although land for the purpose had been acquired at 30-metre width over two decades ago.
Tanker lorries ferrying fuel from the Kochi Refinery and those carrying chemicals account for a major share of goods vehicles that jostle for space with passenger vehicles on the ill-lit and accident-prone corridor.
