The summer of 2008 will bring much cheer for the 6.5 million inhabitants of India’s IT capital Bangalore. Reason: The first phase of the Bangalore metro project covering 33 km is slated to be complete by March 2008 and the first of its kind in India — the elevated highway between the city and Electronic City — will be operational by June 2008.

The projects that have faced long delays are now finally underway. Work on the elevated highway project — under the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) — between Electronic City and the main city along the Hosur road started in July this year. Manoj Kumar, project director, says, “We started the work in July this year and are satisfied with the progress. It’s the first of its kind in India and will be a four-lane overhead service.”

“The work has to take place in two stages — ground work and the bridge work. The contractors are carrying out the ground work by widening the existing four-lane road and making service roads and provisions for drainage. Once they complete a stretch of one km, the bridge work will start while simultaneously carrying on the ground work. We expect the bridge work to begin next month,’’ he added. The elevated highway once ready will cut down travel time from 45 minutes to just 10 minutes. It will also aid the traffic coming to and fro from Chennai.

The elevated highway project was announced on September 27, 2004, contracts for which were expected to be awarded by March 31, 2005. However, the project got delayed due to litigation initiated by Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise Ltd (NICE), which moved the high court as NHAI had asked it to modify its earlier project to avoid ‘clashing’ of the two projects. Subsequently, a compromise was reached whereby the elevated highway will be built at 5.5 metre above the ground level and once it reaches the NICE bridge, it will gradually fly over it at 11 metre above the ground level. Once the ‘hop’ is made, it will again come down to 5.5 metre.

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