Road works: Canal Road expansion falls behind schedule

Project to be completed by January 15, whole road being carpeted.

LAHORE:

The deadline for the expansion of Canal Bank Road has been extended by another month as the work has been slowed by heavy traffic and additional road works.

At the inauguration of the project, Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had given engineers three months to complete the work of adding extra lanes to Canal Bank Road from The Mall to Jail Road, from Jail Road to FC College, from the Punjab University to Jinnah Hospital, and from Jinnah Hospital to Doctors Hospital.

That deadline has now been extended from December 16 to January 15, said Project Director Waqar Haider Naqvi. He said that the Rs1.5 billion project had been delayed because of traffic issues and because the government had given them extra work to do.

He said 80 per cent of the work had been completed and the rest would take another two weeks or so. “By January 15, the road will be smooth and carpeted all the way from The Mall to Doctors Hospital,” he said.

Communication and Works officials said they had been told to now carpet the entire road. “Earlier the project involved work on 3.525 kilometres of road, about 7.15 kilometres both ways. Now we are working on around 18 kilometres both ways,” said a source.

Additionally, railing and poles will be installed and eight overhead bridges built as part of the project. “The project details are being revised. Earlier no overhead bridges were planned,” said the officials.

He said that the sections of Canal Bank Road between the FC College and Jail Road intersections, and the FC College and Jinnah Hospital intersections, were the busiest.

“The chief traffic officer makes us stop work there for four hours every other day to ease congestion,” said the sources, adding that the road got so busy that motorists ended up using the under-construction parts and wardens were unable to stop them.

Saddar Traffic SP Asif Cheema said that traffic police had done their best to ensure the road works went smoothly. He said that additional wardens were deputed to sites of heavy traffic and divergences were quickly placed on Canal Road when needed. “It is one of the main city arteries so it is not easy to manage the flow of traffic,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 13^th, 2011.