Title - No end to commuters’ woes near Hitec City

Revised design, revised budget and revised deadlines, yet no relief. Scores of commuters on the Spinal Road connecting Kukatpally with Madhapur continue to suffer given the delays in completion of the Road over Bridge (RoB) work.Even as the facility continues to elude them, motorists on this stretch, who have been struggling hard to manage in jams, now have traffic restrictions imposed following road repairs taken up there. The move has left the motorists with no choice, but to take a detour which is bound to end up in more traffic snarls.If the delay in completion of the RoB has been angering commuters, the way the stretch near Hitec City MMTS station was allowed to deteriorate, and works taken up now, has compounded it. “The work could have been completed in spells before the monsoon to ensure that inconvenience is not caused to us,” says Ch. Ramamohan, a software employee who commutes between Balanagar and Madhapur.The stretch near the railway track has taken a beating in recent rains and in some instances, two and four-wheelers were seen floating in the water logging here.The facility which could easily get ranked high among the most delayed projects in the city, has seen a series of revisions in terms of design, budget and deadlines. Though Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) which has taken up work on the facility completed the structure on either side, issues on the design of the RoB part that actually flies over the railway tracks have been delaying it.

Finally, necessary approvals on this section of the RoB designed as 910-metre long and 21.5-metre wide with four-lane divided carriageway have been obtained and work taken up, but the budget has already escalated from the initial Rs. 24.38 crore to Rs. 48 crore. And the possibility of a further marginal escalation is not ruled out by the officials.