Kochi: While this is its internal deadline, it may take up to December 2019 to complete all the works and do trial runs, official sources said. The 95-metre-long balanced cantilever structure being built over the tracks at the Ernakulam Junction railway station will be ready by August 2018. Pending works, beginning with reconstruction of the Champakkara bridge into a four-lane structure, and extending the metro viaduct on the 1-km stretch up to Pettah would be over by June 2020, if land was handed over by December as scheduled, they said.
Completing the 1.5-km-long Pettah-SN Junction corridor would take another six months (December 2020) if land was made available in another six months. The subsequent shifting of utility pipelines and cables would take another six months.
The DMRC has already awarded the work to reconstruct the Champakkara bridge. But piling has not begun due to the delay in land acquisition and rehabilitation of traders from the adjacent market.
The bridge can be realised in another 30 months (by June 2020) if land is made available by the district administration. Constructing the bridge is the most critical task in the entire corridor the sources said.
The contractor shortlisted recently to execute pending works on the MG Road-Pettah corridor, CVCC, has deployed three hydraulic rigs at Ernakulam South and two at Thykoodam for piling. Two more rigs will be mobilised within a fortnight for piling for the metro station near Ernakulam Junction railway station and within the station premises.
Meanwhile, DMRC is readying to commence piling at Vyttila Junction within a fortnight, to take the metro viaduct from SA Road to the Vyttila Mobility Hub. The viaduct will stretch over the six-lane flyover proposed by the PWD at the junction. Priority will be accorded to building a pillar located near the flyover.
Faced with pressure from the DMRC, the contracting firm Era Ranken has begun launching pier caps in the 1.20-km-long viaduct being built on the Vyttila Hub-Kunnara Park stretch. Inordinate delay by the firm in completing the work had invited much criticism.