Hyderabad metro work hits roads; bad roads adjacent to pillars add to mysery

Hyderabad: Adding to problems caused by the ongoing Hyderabad Metro Rail work is the bad condition of adjacent roads. Work on pillars for Metro rail is being carried out at Musheerabad and Malakpet, but the road next to it has been badly damaged. Huge stones add to the traffic woes.

Shiv Shanker, a physical trainer with a school at Malakpet, says the Metro work is making travel very difficult. “On one side, there is work of the staircases going on while on the other side, near the pillars, the roads have been damaged. This makes travel from one centre to the other difficult."

The stretch of road from Musheerabad to Malakpet has many bad patches on either side. A senior GHMC official says that this is because “due to the Metro work, the utilities have to be shifted and that is the biggest job that has been carried out on this stretch. A few patches at Musheerabad and Malakpet are yet to be completed.”

Commuters on this stretch have been having a tough time for two years now and there seems to be no sign of the conditions improving. A senior engineer at the site said that while work on the pillars on this stretch has been completed, “the staircase work has to start, which will require further digging.”

Work on bridges to start soon
Work on the steel bridge from Lekha Bhavan to Gopalapuram police station is in full swing after clearances were obtained from the railway authorities. Launching works for the bridge are being carried out in a one-acre area at Chilkaguda which has been given on lease to Hyderabad Metro Rail Limited.

According to a senior officer, “The high-precision steel bridge weighing around 1,100 tonnes was fabricated and assembled at an engineering factory in Ghaziabad. A 500-feet-long trestle structure has been created to support its launching. With permission granted by the railways recently, work is now on in full swing.”

For possible future development and possibility of double-decker trains, a minimum height of 28 feet is being maintained at Oliphanta bridge. Another engineer at the site said, “For the bridge, like for most of the Metro work, we are looking at options of pre-fabricated high strength steel structure so that very little road space is used.”