Troubled waters over bridge, NHAI deep under

The problem, sources say, is in the design proposed in the detailed project report on the basis of which contracts were awarded. In its newly acquired corporate-style of work, NHAI hired a string of consultants to prepare design reports along the entire GQ. The one for the Son bridge was prepared by consultants Cowi-Span, who suggested lining up of concrete piles 30 m below the riverbed as a foundation for the bridge.

This was duly approved by NHAI and the task handed over to contractors Somdatt-NEC, an Indian joint-venture. The company began drilling at the site early last year, but about 10 months ago, when it started placing the concrete piles, the horror came alive. The piles just would not settle. The contractor tried changing spots, but that did not help either.

A steel case was then inserted to help align the piles. Special hammering equipment was imported for this purpose from Singapore. But the steel case could not hold the piles either.

‘‘Basically, a proper assessment has not been made of the riverbed. How deep one can dig, the water movement below the surface and the degree of pressure the concrete will have to withstand to hold the concrete piles steady,’’ says Birendra Kumar, the project engineer for Somdatt-NEC.

The contractor, in fact, has pointed out to NHAI that the pressure exerted on the piles is three times the permissible limit for concrete. In a letter dated April 10, the contractor has stated that ‘‘the design, drawings and specifications of most components of the bridge…are full of errors’’.

The bridge across River Son may be one of the biggest technical goof-ups, but it is not the only one. A 400 m-long flyover near Agra too has met with the same fate. A similar pile-laying method was suggested there, but when the contractors, Gammon India in this case, started drilling, they found gas pipelines running below the surface.

But if at some places it is faults in the original design which have stalled progress, NHAI has also been guilty of changing scope of the work midway through the construction schedule. The bypass running past Etawah is today way behind schedule because NHAI made mid-course correction to add three more underpasses to the contract.

This change upset the financial planning of the contractor, who is today struggling to come out of debt. In this 14 km-long bypass, the company was told nearly a year after the contract was commissioned that three underpasses and slip roads had to be added in the first 7 km.

It led to a cost escalation of Rs 30 crore in the contract amount. What it means that two years later, not even 15 per cent of the work has been completed.

4 yrs later, green boards set off red signal

Pranab Dhal Samanta

FOUR years into the Golden Quadrilateral and the Ministry of Roads, Transport and Highways has suddenly realised that if the BJP-led Government at the Centre has to take credit for the project, the colour of the hoardings on the highway has to change.

After erecting 25-m broad green hoardings with the PM’s picture and his mission painted in white all along the GQ, the ministry has now asked NHAI it wants them to go yellow and black.

It is understood that the ministry realised that green is the colour for state highways and that the Centre would be deprived of the credit if the hoardings were of that colour. So, on February 25, on the instructions of the ministry, NHAI issued a letter (available with The Indian Express) to all its project directors to change the colour combination.

The ministry has, in fact, left no stone unturned to advertise the project as the PM’s own. According to specifications in the contract, the width of the hoarding is supposed to be 12.5 m. But the ministry doubled the size, doubling the cost to over Rs 2 lakh. Official sources say NHAI will have to cough up the extra expenditure.

Senior NHAI officials, however, have a different logic to offer. ‘‘By showing it as the PM’s project we add a sense a urgency. Officials respond quickly to our needs.’’

But the colour change is something the project directors and contractors had not bargained for. Given the high cost involved, officials have now asked them to simply paint them afresh. But this has its own complications as the boards are ‘‘high quality’’.

Privately, on-field NHAI officials too express surprise at the sudden aversion to green. ‘‘We have used this colour combination (green and white) because it is internationally seen as motorist-friendly,’’ says an NHAI official.

Worse, some project directors are still hoisting the green-and-white boards as they haven’t yet got the letter informing them of the change. But a senior ministry official loses no sweat over this. ‘‘So what?’’ he says. ‘‘They will simply paint it again. But the colour combination has to be yellow and black.’’

Between now and 4-lanes, obstacle course

Subrata Nagchoudhury

‘Speed Thrills. Speed also Kills.’ Sitting 10 ft above the road in the cabin of a 15-tonne oil tanker, the roadside warning seems beneath our dignity. But on an incomplete expressway, where the road alternates between patches of newly laid superfast tracks and mud stretches which are more like obstacle courses, it is also a warning ignored at one’s own peril.

There is more than one proof of this on the stretch between Vizag and Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh, where we run into ditches, diversions, herds of cattle, packed and crawling autorickshaws, tractors weighed under hay and husk, and frequently, smashed-up cars, tractors and yes, oil tankers.

Official statistics show that accident figures have been multiplying in Vizag over the past couple of years, and totalled about 880 in 2002 compared to 700 in 2000. Of these, nearly 150 deaths were reported on NH 5. The Andhra Pradesh home minister met the Vizag district police last month to look for a solution.

Mohammed Mumtaz Khan, the 23-year-old driver of the tanker we are hitching a ride on, is a road daredevil as best as they come. The oil tankers, he says, are ‘‘kings of the road’’, the tiny autorickshaws clogging the route ‘‘a menace’’. However, even as he zips past and dangerously comes close to swerving into one, Khan acknowledges the nightmare of driving on an incomplete highway.

‘‘In many stretches where four-laning has been done, there is up and down traffic on all four lanes. It is worse than driving on the old narrow highway. After dark, those monsters coming form the opposite direction seem to ram into you head on.’’

An NHAI official calls it a temporary phase, saying that in certain patches, the new lanes had to be thrown open to traffic to facilitate construction on the other side.

However, Khan also points out that there are no embankment barriers along the four-lane highway. ‘‘Such barriers can be found only where the four-laning has been completed. The highway here is lined on both sides by human settlements and villages and there are frequent intrusions. If barriers are not put up, accidents will be recurring.’’

Lt Col George Matthews, DGM, NHAI, argues that as per norms embankment barriers are to be put up only on stretches where the embankment is less than 3 m in width.

But it is clear that the meeting last month between the Andhra home minister and Vizag district police has had some impact. Near Tuni, a highway patrol, on brand new Toyota Qualises, keeps vigil. It was flagged off by CM Chandrababu Naidu recently.

NHAI burns midnight oil, farmers won’t ‘see light’

Reshma Patil

FROM Hosur near Bangalore to Ranipeth near Chennai, the highway is being built on the strength of nearly 6,000 farmers who have signed consent letters since last year, and overriding protests of almost everyone who falls in the way.

On the last leg of the 90-plus km towards Chennai, nobody has handed over land voluntarily.

‘‘They want money first. Officially we have not received a single hectare of land. We are working only on government land given to NHAI,” says a highly placed NHAI official at Chennai.

Many who did sign consent letters are suspicious of the deal struck. ‘‘I didn’t want to sign,’’ says M. Jaykumar at Peddukallipalli village. “The tehsildar told us they would acquire the land anyway.”

At Krishnagiri, Project Director E. Venkata Reddy has solved the problem by sending his team out until midnight, waving promises of Rs 35,000 per acre of dry land and Rs 50,000 per acre of wet land. ‘‘Ninety per cent land has been entered into by voluntary consent,’’ says Jagan Mohana Rao, Manager (Technical), at Krishnagiri. But mid-April, pockets of land between Krishnagiri and Ranipeth were still waiting to be handed over.