The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) on Monday opened one stretch of the Shivananda Circle steel flyover for the public as a trial run.
Earlier, the civic body decided to open the flyover on August 15, but after the recent rains, asphalting work on the stretch had not been completed.
“The stretch between Seshadripuram to Race Course side has been opened to decongest traffic under the flyover. The work is still going on and we have only opened this stretch as part of the trial run,” said Lokesh, Chief Engineer, Projects, BBMP, said.
After building the skeleton of the flyover, the BBMP ran into land acquisition problems, grounding the project. It had to acquire 500 sqm of land towards the Seshadripuram railway underpass and this ran into legal challenges.
Days before the project was to be completed in November 2021, the BBMP opted for a design change to make do with the available land.
The flyover project was conceived in 2011 and the State Cabinet approved ₹19.8 crore in 2017. Later, the project cost shot up to ₹39.5 crore as the earlier planned 326-metre flyover had to be extended to 492.84 metres.
If everything is done on time, the civic body plans to get Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai to inaugurate the flyover. Mr. Lokesh clarified that the flyover may be opened to the public officially by the end of this month.
