New Brahmaputra bridge to have Railway line

Guwahati, Dec 08: NHAI will construct a new bridge over the riverBrahmaputra near Guwahati which will have a railway line as well.

Highly placed Asom government informed today said, ''The decisionwas taken following the intervention of the Prime Minister's office.

The Prime minister would be announcing this during the foundationstone laying ceremony.'' The bridge would be constructed under the EastWest Corridor project by National Highway Authority of India (NHAI).The NHAI was not keen for a road-cum-rail bridge as the work for theroad bridge was already alloted to Gammon and all paper works have beencompleted, sources said.

The sources said the plan was finally changed as both Railway andAsom Government had put pressure on the NHAI. The PMO had called ChiefSecretary of Asom S K Kabilan on last Tuesday and it was in- principledecided that road-cum-rail bridge would be constructed.

Both Asom Government and Railway was in favour of constructing railway lines on the bridge as traffic was increasing.

Giving broad layout of the bridge, the National Highway Authorityof India (NHAI) top brasses said there would be a flyover in theGuwahati to connect the approach of the bridge and the existing roads.

The flyover has six-lane carriageways and each three-lanecarriageways would have separate foundations, substructures andsuperstructures. The length of the flyover would be 243 metresconsisting of three modules.

The length of the main bridge would be 1493.584 metres and therewould be 12 spans of this gigantic bridge, where super specializedconstruction technology would be used by Gammon to reduce the time ofconstruction.

In fact, in the ongoing East-West corridor project more than 65major bridges were being re-constructed throughout theSilchar-Srirampur stretch of the NHAI and basic work have alreadystarted.

A whopping Rs 5470 was being spent on this project to widen the678 kilometer stretch from existing two to four lanes. The work hasbeen delayed by the land acquisition and environment problem.

UNI