Construction chaos on Galle and Duplication roads
Current traffic congestion on Galle and Duplication roads would revert to its previous position with no serious improvement upon completion of road work within 10 months, a top government official said on Thursday.
Though motorists expect some sort of improvement to everyday traffic, Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) Director Traffic and Project Manager Nihal Wickramaratne however told the Business Times that they did not expect any “serious improvement” in traffic flows.
The work involves only upgrading the road with street furniture and other landscaping work to beautify the city, it was pointed out.
Work is currently being carried out on three packages namely – Galadari Hotel to Kollupitiya (Package A), Bambalapitiya to Roxy theatre (Package B) and the entire Duplication road (Package C).
Commenting on the present congestion, Mr. Wickramaratne observed “When there is construction there will be congestion,” and in this respect it was necessary to streamline the traffic and ensure safety measures were in place. The timeline of these projects were set for 10 months under Package A and 12 months each for the other two stretches of roads.
Work had already commenced about two months back on the Galadari to Kollupitiya road while work commenced about four and two months back on packages B and C, respectively.
He explained that they had already identified certain by-lanes and insisted on ‘no-parking’ on these routes in a bid to ensure a smooth flow of traffic from the main roads to use as a corridor to other roads.
One of the Project Managers at International Construction Consortium (ICC), contractors to the project, said they were also involved in laying cables for the Electricity Board and Sri Lanka Telecom in addition to carrying out sewage work in some areas aswell.
This is part of the Metro Colombo Urban Development Project carried out through funding from the World Bank amounting to a total of Rs.3.5 billon under the purview of the CMC.