Vijayawada: Work on the Iconic Bridge between Pavitra Sangamam and Amaravati Administration Area will start very soon. The Tender Notification has already been released. Rs 1,434 crores budget estimations have been given for this 3.2 km-long bridge. As December 18 is the last date for filing the tenders, the process may start in the last week of December and the designs will come within two months, i.e. in March, 2018. If everything goes smoothly, the construction may start in the month of April or May, 2018.
From Ferry to Nandigama, the Krishna river has divided the Krishna and Guntur districts. The people of the riverbank villages have been using boats to cross the river. To reach Amaravati by road, is a long distance. Once the bridge is completed, vehicles coming from Hyderabad can go to Amaravati directly.
The designs of this Iconic Bridge have been prepared by a few institutions and submitted to the Chief Minister through ADC (Amaravati Development Corporation). Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu has picked out two designs and asked that they be improved upon. The new design was submitted in the month of July. Now the process starts, beginning with the tender notification.
As per the ADC Officials, the design will be submitted by the company which gets the construction tender. The chief engineer of ADC, Mr Moses Kumar, said, “The design will be prepared by the contract company which gets the tender in the EPP model. Previous designs were checked by the CM, who has ordered us to follow the EPP process”. The construction of the bridge will start after March, 2018 and it may take one or one-and-a-half year to complete. Which means, only the new government formed in 2019 will inaugurate the Iconic Bridge.
