By correspondent at Bharuch: The woes of commuters and transporters owing to recurring horrible jams on the all important Ahmedabad-Mumbai section of National Highway 8 in Bharuch is likely to be over by March next year when the construction of India’s largest extra dosed bridge on river Narmada is re-scheduled to be completed. The deadline of completion of bridge work was August 2016 and later it was extended to November this year. However now the target is to complete it by March next year.

The 1344 meter long and 22.8 meter wide four lane cable stay bridge, the 3rd bridge over Narmada in Bharuch, being built by Larsen & Tubro as part of Rs 379 crore six laning project of the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) between km 192 to km 198 section of Bharuch-Surat segment of NH8 was to be completed by September this year ahead of its schedule.

The work for the bridge that bears similarity to the famous Golden Ears bridge of Vancouver in Canada was started in the middle of year 2014 after its construction was handed over to L& T following the failure of the earlier venture of HCC company which had got the order before it at a higher cost on built, operate, own and transfer (BOOT) basis. Under L & T the work was running ahead of schedule and the union road transport minister Nitin Gadkari had informed that it would be operational by September this year. Some officials related to project even went on to say that it would be ready by August.

But it has got delayed owing to various reasons and now is likely to be operational by March next year.

Project Director of the NHAI S P Sharma today said that certain land issues and the highly technical nature of the bridge has somewhat slowed down the pace of the work.
‘The uneven flow and level of water in the river has hampered some high precision work like placing the segments of the bridge at proper places through special boats. The water level in Narmada had gone down drastically during summers while after it during monsoon the high tide and release of water from dams during caused it surge. In such scenario the high precision works which involved carrying heavy weight segments weighing 132 tons each by boats got hampered. If precautionary measures are not taken, a major tragedy may occur. The whole bridge will be made up of total 10 spans of which 8 will be of 144 meters while the two on both ends will be of 96 meters each. It will be supported on cable stay and its highest point will be 120 ft high,’ Mr Sharma said.

He said that some land related issue also got it delayed. ‘some of the land in the river-bed was found to be in the name of farmers at a late stage and caused delay in acquisition,’ the project director said adding that it was not unusual for a project of such high technical nature to be delayed by a few months.

‘One can imagine the delicate nature of work by the very fact that some of the installations can’t be done if the wind speed crosses 40 km per hour. Now the project in all likelihood will be completed by March next year. Almost 80 to 85 % job has been done and the remaining including the final finish will be completed latest by March,’ the Project Director said.

This will be only fourth extra dosed bridge in the country. One of the example of such bridge is the new bridge in Kolkata across river Hooghly. Such bridges use cable stay to support the segments of bridges with very less number of pillars.Compared to a pure cable-stayed or cantilever-girder bridge of comparable span, an extradosed bridge uses much shorter stay-towers or pylons than the cable-stayed bridge, and a significantly shallower deck/girder structure than used on the girder bridge. The first extradosed bridge in the country (over 196 metres long) was built for the Delhi Metro between Pragati Maidan and Indraprastha over railway tracks. The Canada bridge over river Fraser to which the new Bharuch bridge will bear resemblance has only five spans.

The bridge being constructed parallel to Sardar Bridge, made in 80’s during the regime of the them Prime Minister Smt Indira Gandhi (the other one being British Era Golden Bridge) is expected to reduce frequent traffic jams on this stretch of NH-8, which is the busiest road in the country, connecting Mumbai to Delhi. As per an estimate an average of over 10000 trucks are reported to ply daily on the NH-8 in Gujarat. This bridge will not only serve the traffic from the ports of Hazira and Dahej, but will also cater to the heavy flow of industrial traffic on the Golden Corridor between Ankleshwar, Bharuch, Surat and Dahej SEZ. The development will also remove a significant bottleneck and facilitate free movement of traffic.

The NH 8 in Bharuch sees many horrible jams every now and then owing to the routine maintenance work on the Sardar Bridge on this one of the busiest national highways.

In June this year it had led to an around 40-km-long traffic jam leaving over 20,000 vehicles trapped on the highway for over two days.
Local resident Prakash Dave recalls this jam saying it took vehicles hours just to cross a distance of 20 to 25 km. Jam on both sides of the bridge stretched about 15 km towards Vadodara and around 25 km towards Surat. Many smaller vehicles like passenger cars were forced to take a detour and travel through the interiors of Bharuch city. This again led to massive traffic jam in the city. More than 200 policemen were deployed to control the situation.

Police later made one way to and fro traffic arrangement through 1881 built Golden bridge as well as Sardar bridge to manage the situation, he said.
Another local resident Parin Patel says,’ This stretch witnesses a major traffic jam almost every month. People of Bharuch and Ankleshwar have become used to traffic congestion and are praying for early construction of the new bridge over the river to get some relief from it.’

Such jams on this highway which is a key transport corridor translates in to huge financial losses as well.

The new bridge once operational will not only give respite to common commuters but also will give a major boost to the economy by smoothing the industrial and commercial traffic.

The most interesting point amid all the hullabaloo is that while the while the Sardar bridge made much later has become dilapidated needing frequent repair and maintenance the British era Golden Bridge has seen many floods and natural disasters like earthquakes, but it has stood for over 130 years, providing daily transportation to the people of Ankleshwar and Bharuch. Its length is 1412 m.

DeshGujarat