Road rules: PU pedestrian bridge knocked down by truck

Attempted murder case registered against truck driver.

LAHORE:

A concrete pedestrian bridge on Canal Bank Road near Punjab University collapsed after being struck by a truck carrying heavy machinery here on Friday night, some six months after a similar incident on the Ring Road.

The truck was transporting a section of a bridge and an industrial cooling unit from Karachi to the dry port at Mughalpura. Part of its cargo was protruding at a height of above 16 feet, the height of the bridge, and crashed into it at high speed, knocking down a concrete section of the pedestrian overpass at the Punjab University Hostel No 15. The truck had passed under five new steel pedestrian bridges on the same road which are 18 feet high, said officials of the city government.

Muslim Town police registered a case against the truck driver, Liaqat Khan, on the complaint of Lahore Development Authority (LDA) Deputy Director Zafar Iqbal, under Sections 324 (attempted murder), 427 (mischief causing damage of Rs50 or more) and 279 (rash driving) of the Pakistan Penal Code. Police officials said that no one had been hurt in the incident.

Haji Riaz, the driver’s cousin, said that the arrest of Liaqat Khan was unjust. Khan was not the one to have loaded the truck in Karachi, so it was unfair to blame him, he said. He had spoken to his cousin in custody, he added.

The bridge had been built in 1998 by the Lahore Development Authority’s Urban Development wing, with the National Engineering Services of Pakistan (Nespak) acting as consultants.

Officials of the Constructions and Works Department said that heavy traffic was not supposed to be allowed on Canal Bank Road. Traffic Police officials said that the Punjab government had given permission for heavy traffic to ply on the road because of ongoing construction work at various main roads.



Soon after the bridge was brought down at close to midnight on Friday, city government officials, led by DCO Noorul Amin Mengal, arrived at the scene to supervise the clearance operation. A crane was called in, but the first that arrived was too small to move the 80-ton concrete section of bridge from the road, so a bigger crane had to be called in. The road was cleared by around 8am.

Tariq Zaman, the staff officer to the DCO, said that Mengal had ordered the construction of a new bridge at the site. He said that the concrete bridge had a ground clearance of 16 feet, as opposed to the five brides before it which were 18 feet high.

Zaman said that heavy traffic had been temporary allowed to use Canal Bank Road because of the construction work at Multan Road and heavy traffic load at the Ravi Bridge leading to the Ring Road.

Chief Traffic Officer Captain (retired) Sohail Chaudhry said that wardens had been told to make sure that heavy vehicles were not carrying loads exceeding weight and height limits. He said that as soon as the various construction works in the city were finished, heavy vehicles would be allowed only on Multan Road and the Ring Road.

On June 28, a dumper truck travelling with its bucket up crashed into a pedestrian bridge on the Ring Road in Harbanspura. The bridge collapsed on the truck, killing the driver.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 23^rd, 2012.