Kolkata: Tallah bridge before Pujas? – Times of India

KOLKATA: The state government is trying to open the new Tallah bridge before the Pujas, newly appointed state PWD minister Pulak Roy said on Thursday.
“Our priority is to open the new bridge before the Pujas, as per chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s wishes. We are determined to complete the pending work by then,” Roy said after his first meeting with department officials and engineers.
The new bowstring bridge now stands with all six girders launched. Spanning around 150m in length and 9 metres above the road surface, it is now being fitted with bearings. It will take four days to completely place the last 52m-long span on the bearings.
The state public works department (PWD), the implementing agency, had earlier declared that the Rs 350-crore Tallah bridge reconstruction project would be over on Poila Baishakh (April 15). Then came the third wave, when several labourers were infected with Covid and the commissioning was deferred till September.
PWD officials also blamed the delay to cumbersome welding work of the six girders. Fabricated sections of the girders, each of which has 80 components, were brought from PWD’s Panagarh site and assembled at the site. The new bridge has no bolts, parts are assembled at the site through welding, for which labourers had to scale a height of around 9 metres.
The new Tallah bridge is actually a road overbridge (ROB) under Eastern Railway’s ambit. A 240m section of the 750m structure stands over the Tallah railway tracks operated by ER. The last railway block was given in July for girder launching, ER officials said.
PWD engineers and those from contractors L&T are working round the clock to meet the pre-Puja deadline. “We are on a 24-hour shift now. Keeping our fingers crossed, lest heavy rains defer the launch yet again,” said an engineer. After fitting the bowstring girders, deck-casting will start and go on for the next fortnight, following which bituminous overlaying will begin. Meanwhile, work on expansion joints will start. Casting of the ramp to Dunlop will go on simultaneously for the next 10 days.
“If the rainfall is moderate, the work for bituminous overlaying will not be affected,” an official said.
Construction of the north Kolkata lifeline that will link the city with suburbs like Dunlop, Sodepur and Barrackpore had started in August 2020. Contractors L&T, which first pulled down the 60-year-old structure, was given 21 months to complete the work.