Sharif to open widened Canal Road today

Project engineer says final touches to continue through Feb.

LAHORE:

Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif will formally open the Canal Road on Sunday (today) to signify completion of the project.

Earlier, the 90-day deadline for the project (December 16) was extended by a month.  While a road lance was added during this month, project components like installation of over head bridges and roadside rails on two sections from Punjab University Quaid-i-Azam Campus to Thokar Niaz Baig is still underway.

A  Communications and Works Department official told The Express Tribune that lane marking and installation of railings was likely to be completed in February. He said the railings, a security feature, was an important part.

He said if the project was assessed according to the design, only one section of the road_ from The Mall to Jail Road_ had been completed n accordance with original design.

While, other sections were yet to be completed in the ‘true sense,’ he said it was not the fist time the chief minister was inaugurating an under-construction project. “Since the road expansion is complete, the project can be inaugurated,” he said.

Project Manager Waqar Haider Naqvi told The Tribune that the stretch from The Mall to Doctors’ Hospital, which was divided into four sections. He said the road had been widened to 42 feet (including shoulders), the uplifted ground, from 24 feet. The three-kilometre stretch from Doctors’ Hospital to Thokar Niaz Baig also had six feet shoulder on both sides.

He said overhead pedestrian bridges were installed keeping in view of the large number of pedestrian crossings.

Project Director Munir Mir, also a Provincial Highway superintendent engineer, said that three over head bridges would be completed by Saturday (today), while work on the rest of the five over head bridges will continue.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 15^th, 2012.