The National Transportation Planning and Research Centre (NATPAC) has submitted a detailed report to the Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board(KIIFB) outlining steps to decongest Vyttila – said to be the biggest junction in Kerala, where acute traffic congestion and chaos prevail even after the commissioning of a six-lane flyover in 2021.
The report is a revision of the one that had been prepared in May 2023.
The revision follows a recent decision to allocate land to the KSRTC for a long-distance bus depot at the Vyttila Mobility Hub (VMH), in return for the KSRTC-owned land at Karikkamury in the city to build an integrated bus terminal. The report also took into account the phase-two development of VMH, where commercial development has been envisaged as part of steps to mobilise revenue, said sources in NATPAC.
All this was in addition to a proposal to have U-turns below flyovers that were planned on the northern and southern sides of Vyttila Junction. This would streamline movement of vehicles in the east-west direction, as in Palarivattom, they added.
At present, the movement of vehicles from the Palarivattom and Kundannur sides towards S.A. Road and Thripunithura as well as those from Palarivattom wanting to turn left towards Thripunithura and VMH is hindered. Experts, commuters, and NGOs had attributed this to shoddy planning by the PWD (NH wing) that built the flyover.
Flyovers
NATPAC in its capacity as the design consultant for KIIFB had in 2023 suggested the construction of a pair of flyovers parallel to the metro viaduct that crossed Vyttila Junction in the S.A. Road-Thripunithura corridor in order to decongest the junction and half a dozen approach roads to it. Another option that the agency suggested was a 3-km-long, at-grade-cum-elevated corridor along the backwaters on the Elamkulam-Champakkara stretch.
In the meantime, the PWD’s assurance in early 2021 to carry out widening and second-phase development works of the junction in order to streamline the flow of vehicles and to ensure safety of pedestrians is yet to be fulfilled.
