A 100 km flyover

Is West Bengal going to get the longest flyover on earth? Yes, if state urban development minister Firhad Hakim has his way. Addressing a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) event on Tuesday, the minister announced that the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA) is planning to build a 100-km-long flyover from Garia to Bongaon. Fifty-four-km-long Bang Na Expressway in Thailand is now the longest singleflyover in the world. If everything goes according to plan, it should not take more than three years to complete the project, Hakim said. The minister said a survey is already on to look into the project’s viability. “Once this preliminary survey is done, a detailed project report (DPR) will be prepared,” he added. “We have appointed Larsen & Toubro to conduct the survey. In the next three to four months, we will get a clearer picture,” said the minister. If the project actually materializes, it will significantly reduce traffic snarls along this stretch. In India, it will be comparable only to the ring roads in Delhi which have a combined length of 87 km. A huge number of trucks ply on a daily basis from Bongaon into various parts of Kolkata and the southern fringes. This flyover can put Bengal’s infrastructure on the national map alongside Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Surat that have the country’s best flyovers. Once the survey findings are out, expressions of interest (EOP) would be invited for the project. “A DPR will be prepared based on survey results. The project will be based on a toll tax basis and not on public private partnership (PPP) basis,” Hakim said. Once the project is done, a huge part of the cost could be raised over a period of time through toll tax. However, the details of the funding have not yet been worked out. A senior urban development department official said: “There have been talks for quite some time for a long flyover in that area. However, the details have not yet been worked out.”