The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) will take one week to complete the repair work at the Sumanahalli flyover, where a hole surfaced recently.
The repair work is leading to traffic snarls on the Outer Ring Road stretch in West Bengaluru. On September 20, a hole developed on the RCC slab of the flyover, situated on the Goraguntepalya-Nayandahalli section of the ORR, over the busy Magadi Road connecting Nagarabhavi and the Dr. Rajkumar Samadhi.
Speaking to The Hindu, BBMP West Zone assistant executive engineer Balaji Gowda said that the work has started where rapid setting cement is used to repair the hole on the flyover. “The work will take a week to complete. We are using top-grade concrete to repair the hole,” he added
“We have investigated the flyover and there is no danger owing to the present hole,” Mr. Gowda said, adding, “An analysis will be conducted, and we will take 30 days to get a report on the stability of the flyover.”
The officials said that the flyover was commissioned by the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) in 2010 and was handed over to the BBMP in 2016. In 2019 too, the flyover had seen a similar hole and the civic body had repaired it, officials said.
Earlier, Chief Commissioner of BBMP Tushar Giri Nath said that the BBMP has given a contract to a company to study the stability and other issues related to all the 47 flyovers in the city.
One side of Shivananda flyover opened
In another part of the city, the civic body has opened one side of the Shivananda Circle steel flyover for traffic movement despite the pending report. The BBMP had earlier opened one stretch of the Shivananda Circle steel flyover for the public as a trial run, but after receiving criticism on the quality issue of the flyover, Mr. Giri Nath directed officials to go for an audit by the experts from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc).
However, speaking to The Hindu, Lokesh, Chief Engineer, Projects, BBMP, said, “There is no problem regarding the safety of flyover. The stretch is safe and meets all standard safety qualities, but still, since a few people have raised concerns, we have written to the experts in IISc to conduct an audit and they are yet to submit the report.”
The BBMP had approached a team headed by Prof Chandra Kishen J. M. from the Civil Engineering Department of IISc to conduct a safety audit of the flyover.
Another officer from the BBMP said that the complaints on the steel flyover are about the vibrations felt during the vehicle movement and there is no rider comfort. “This issue has to be addressed soon, hence the expert audit report is important and the advice provided by the IISc expert team will be implemented,” the official said.
Earlier, the BBMP had decided to officially open the 492.84 m flyover to the public on Independence day, but the work was not completed and the civic body postponed the opening date.
The flyover project was conceived in 2011 and the State Cabinet approved ₹19.8 crore in 2017.
