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Link road a must to serve Kuril flyover's purpose

Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed laid the foundation of the flyover on December 17. The Tk 303-crore project is intended to ease traffic bottleneck at the level crossing and establish a link with the proposed Purbachal satellite town of Rajuk

Tawfique Ali
The proposed Kuril flyover at Pragati Sarani-Airport Road intersection will not help much in easing traffic movement and divert the city's traffic from the city's western to eastern part until the Purbachal link road is in place, said transport experts.
“Purbachal will not be served and linked with the Kuril flyover until the road is built. As the flyover is being built without the road in place, it will not help achieve the purpose," said leading transport expert Dr M Rahmatullah.
Rahmatullah, a policy advisor on Transport Sector Management Reform at the Planning Commission, however said the flyover would reduce traffic snarl-up at the railway level crossing and intersection of Pragati Sarani and Airport road.
Purbachal link road is recommended in Dhaka's Strategic TYansport Plan (STP) to connect Rajuk's Purbachal New Town with Biswa Road (Pragati Sarani). Though the Roads and Highways Department was assigned to build the road a couple of years back, the initiative could not make much progress and was abandoned.
Rajuk took over the road project in mid 2008 and is expected to start construction by mid January next year, said Purbachal New Town Project Director ABM Rafiqul Islam Khan.
Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed laid the foundation of the flyover on December 17.
The Tk 303-crore project is intended to ease traffic bottleneck at the level crossing and establish a link with the proposed Purbachal satellite town of Rajuk.
Prof Jamilur Reza Choudhury, who headed a 31-member advisory expert committee on STP, said that such grade separation structure as proposed at Kuril intersection would help reduce delay in traffic movement at the railway level crossing.
Rajuk is set to commence construction of the 2.8 kilometre long flyover in next March and complete it by December 2010 with exit points at Banani and on Airport Road, Pragati Sarani and Purbachal link road.
But according to project
officials, the link road is scheduled to be complete by 2012. The proposed link road starts within 300 feet from the intersection.
According to the transport experts, Mohakhali overpass could not achieve its desired goal of easing the traffic rush on the Airport Road simply because the authorities did not build an underground tunnel across the Tejgaon old airstrip, despite recommended in the STP.
The proposed tunnel, from where Mohakali flyover ends at the Jahangir Gate, was very essential for traffic management on the
Airport Road, said Dr Rahmatullah.
It would serve the purpose of offloading heavy traffic on the Airport Road and drain out the traffic flow before reaching the Rangs Bhaban intersection (Bijoy Sarani) reducing the traffic load in front of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO).
The tunnel would divert around 60 percent of the traffic load, that take the old Airport Road in front of the Prime Minister's Office, to Rokeya Sarani, said Dr Rahmatullah.
According to his study for Detailed Area Plan of
Dhaka, more than 50 percent of the Airport Road traffic flow from Mohakhali turns right at Bijoy Sarani intersection to go to Lalbagh, Lalmatia, Dhanmondi, Mohammadpur, Mirpur, Shyamoli and Kalyanpur.
The government however constructed an on-the-surface 2.6-kilometer-long and 53-foot-wide link road along the old airport which expert say will not completely serve the purpose of diverting traffic flow to areas like Mirpur, Mohammadpur, Agargaon, Shyamoli, Rayerbazar, Dhanmondi and Lalbagh.