Even as a notification on acquiring land for the airport extension of Seaport-Airport Road is slated for publication on September 30, the Public Works department (PWD) is hamstrung by non-allocation of funds to widen the bottlenecked and accident-prone Bharat Matha College-Irumpanam stretch of the road.
This has resulted in much of the land that had been acquired at 30-metre width by Roads and Bridges Development Corporation of Kerala (RBDCK) over two decades ago, either getting weed infested and lying idle or encroached upon.
The RBDCK that handed over the 11.5-km road to PWD in 2020, had widened only the 2.5-km Kalamassery-BM College stretch. The RBDCK’s role is now limited to executing the corridor’s airport extension, while the PWD has been unable to widen rest of the narrow but busy corridor that is used daily by a few thousand lorries that carry fuel and other hazardous cargo, containers, and other goods.
