Thiruvananthapuram: Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Friday said the Palarivattom flyover would be strengthened and opened for traffic within ten months.
At the Cabinet briefing, the chief minister said grave lapses had been found during the detailed technical evaluation carried out by a team of experts headed by DMRC principal advisoer Dr E. Sreedharan.
The repair, restoration and strengthening work will cost about Rs 18.5 crore at the current rates.
In the study carried out by the expert team, several irregularities were detected. The flyover has 102 RCC girders. Of these, 97 have cracks. A special kind of paint was used which hampered detection of the intensity of actual cracks on the surface.
The concrete used was of poor quality. Normally, the life span of a flyover is 100 years. But the lapses that were found indicate that it could have lasted only 20 years. There were defects right from the beginning including in the design itself.
Adequate quantity of construction material including cement and iron was not used. Hence the concrete did not have the required strength. All iron bearings that were used for fixing beams were found to be defective.
The flyover has 18 Pier caps.
