Kolkata: May date for Tallah bridge opening – Times of India

Kolkata News

The inspection of the bridge on Friday

KOLKATA: The new Tallah bridge will be thrown open to the public in May, KMC’s deputy mayor and Cossipur-Belgachhia MLA Atin Ghosh said on Friday.
Ghosh and state PWD minister Moloy Ghatak inspected the site on Friday, after which Ghatak said, “We should be able to complete the project in the next few months.” But Ghosh, who is the local MLA as well as KMC’s deputy mayor, was more specific: “We hope to commission the bridge by May. It’s not even two years since demolition of the old bridge had started in February 2020. Despite the pandemic and delays over permission from Railways, progress has been pretty good, especially last two months.”
The 60-year-old Tallah bridge was pulled down in April 2020 because it was worn beyond repair. Construction of the bowstring four-lane bridge began in August. TOI reported last Friday that girder-launching for the construction of the bridge’s superstructure is now on. The new Tallah bridge is actually a road overbridge (ROB) under Eastern Railway’s ambit.
A 240m section of the 750m structure will stand over the Tallah railway tracks operated by ER, which needed permission from the Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS), the autonomous body under the civil aviation ministry, for construction of two spans (between piers 7 and 8 and piers 8 and 9) on the railway tracks, by the girder-launching.
The CRS’ approval came on December 8 and construction to join the six piers each on the Shyambazar and the Dunlop end, and another six in the middle to support the deck slab over the tracks, has been going on since then. This is the most crucial part of the project.
The state public works department (PWD), the implementing agency, had earlier declared that the Rs 350crore Tallah bridge reconstruction project would be over in February this year, and later pushed it to April. Then came the third wave and several labourers were infected with Covid. Despite the constraints, PWD and construction agency L&T have been working day and night to complete launching of girders to build the bridge deck.
Amid apprehensions of further delay in the bridge’s commissioning, Ghatak’s inspection on Friday came as a boost for his department to complete assembling the six bowstring girders, each spanning around 1.5km, by February and build the approach roads from Shyambazar and Dunlop ends.
The superstructure is a continuous girder system spanning the railway tracks, built with sequential erection of the girders one after the other in each span to form the deck, which will be later concretized. Launching of the pre-assembled girders has started from the Shyambazar end.
The ROB’s bowstring design is now visible as the fabricated sections, brought from PWD’s Panagarh site, are being assembled.

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Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/kolkata-may-date-for-tallah-bridge-opening/articleshow/89050650.cms