Mumbai: Kalyan locals brace for traffic jams till new bridge comes up

Central Railway dismantles century-old Patri Pul in Kalyan, after IIT-B safety audit deemed it unsafe, on Sunday. Pics/Sameer Markande

For the next seven months at least, residents of Kalyan will have to grin and bear more traffic jams. Reason: that's how long authorities have said it will take for the new bridge to come up in place of Patri Pul, demolished yesterday.

While the MSRDC, which is going to build the new bridge, is still awaiting permission from Central Railway, for now, motorists will have to make do with Dharmaveer Anand Dighe bridge, the one parallel to Pul. The CR had announced a mega block, which it lifted 45 minutes before the given time as demolition wrapped up fast.

A few hiccups
A commuter, Durgesh Jadhav, said, "We were prepared for this block; hence, I did not take my vehicle till station." "We knew we would get stuck in traffic... Roads here are not that wide, so we were stuck for half an hour," said Santosh Shinde, a resident.

Most locals avoided stepping out altogether, while other faced some jams. The traffic police and Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC) officials were on the spot to ease the situation.

Making way for new
CR CPRO Sunil Udasi said, "We had good equipment with advanced technology, which helped us to finish the demolition faster, as compared to the 15 hours it took for Hancock Bridge. Audits of several bridges are on; we hope we can ensure that construction of all is done as fast as possible."

About Patri Pul, he added, "The bridge had two steel spans, each 27 metres long and weighing approximately 60 tons, which were removed by two crawler cranes of 600 tons and 400 tons. The road surface was dismantled without any block. A team of 250-300, including 50 engineers, 200 workers and RPF personnel, was on the job."

From the railways
Sunil Udasi,
Central Railway, CPRO
'We had good equipment with advanced technology, which helped us to finish the demolition faster, as compared to the 15 hours it took to demolish Hancock Bridge. Audits of several bridges are going on; we hope we can ensure that construction of all is done as fast as possible'

Officialspeak
'KDMC Commissioner Govind Bodke said, "Our officials are on the spot to manage any problem. We have started a special bus service between Kalyan and Dombivli, and also tied up with MSRTC, which ran 25-30 special bus services to Pune and Nashik to compensate for the cancelled intercity trains."

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