Bardhaman (West Bengal): The Indian railways has completed the construction of the giant four-lane cable-stayed Railway Over Bridge (RoB) at Bardhaman Junction in West Bengal.
The RoB which is considered to be the second largest in the country is set to be inaugurated by the Railway Minister Piyush Goyal on September 30.
"This project will set the standards for future fast track construction over busy Railway yard," tweeted Ministry of Railways.
The work on 188.43-metre cable-stayed RoB was started in 2012. Besides having 1.5 metre-wide footpaths on each of the sides parallel to the lanes, the RoB has 27.7 metres of width to accommodate vehicles on four lanes.
Built at a cost of Rs. 300 crore, the project has been completed with 50:50 sharing between the Ministry of Railways and the West Bengal government
The RoB, apart from social resistance, had to overcome certain technical constraints too like a restriction of the maximum height of the road surface clearances and also a busy movement of rolling stocks over the yard, one RVNL official said. After the vintage RoB built brick by brick in the British era on the Bardhaman–Katwa road was declared endangered, the cry for a modern RoB intensified and the Railway authority, in 1996 conceived a plan to build a state-of-the-art RoB. The idea, however, was shelved as the state didn’t take the initiative.
India's second largest Railway Over Bridge to be inaugurated on Sept 30
But the plan got firmed up in 2007 as the state agreed to the acquisition of land for the purpose of laying approach roads to the four-lane hanging bridge.
The Centre finally gave a go-ahead in 2010 and the work began in 2012. The district magistrate, Bardhaman (East), Vijay Bharti attended a meeting with the RVNL and Eastern Railway officials on the RoB itself to help expedite the construction work.
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