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Express Highway to Airport. Road to Nowhere! The True Story, unmasked!
A Photo Feature by Exclusive Ventures, June 2007
This story will put to rest the tiniest expectations that we all had on connectivity to Hitec City, synchronizing with the expected inauguration of Shamshabad Airport.
Its with extreme discomfort that we are presenting this photo tour of the progress of Express Highway. No amount of Govt. or HUDA statements are going to work. In fact we ourselves had mentioned, in previous reports on Govt. inefficiency, that the Army need to be called-in, immediately, if vehicles are to pass through the Express Highway. But the physical tour of the length and breadth of the road that we took couple of days back, has shattered all hopes.
The situation is so bad that even Load Rama would have no qualm in declining to take up the challenge of completing this project, not by March 2008 but even by March 2009!
The project was all along touted by Govt. and HUDA as the great Govt. offering to match in style and substance to the privately built Airport. And indeed it should have been so. If a private company can construct and compete a Greenfield Project as per schedule in just about 2 years, can't a 20Km road be built, in time?
We followed the ORR from Guchibowli to almost near Shamshabad along rough dirt tracks used by dump trucks. It didn't take more than 5 minutes for a state of disbelief to set in. As we moved ahead, disbelief gave way to disgust, revulsion and finally ended in throwing up.
There is no point in hiding the fact that the citizens have been let down, very badly. There are miles of road length where no work has been done. There are huge hills to be broken through, large bridges to be constructed, huge embankments running into KMs to be built, innumerable culverts, flyovers and under- passes have to be made.
Just think back and remember the time taken, to complete a single, simple flyover in the city!
Certain locations look so terrible, that you would never imagine that a road will come up here at all! The fact is that the work progress has been extremely poor from the beginning. It can not turn bad all of a sudden. At this stage, the whole place should have seen hectic activity of blasting, rock cutting, excavation and road building in full force.
In the entire run, we did not run into a single Engineer! I personally have worked on large infrastructure projects for more than 15 years. A time bound project would be a beehive of activity with an array of engineers, supervisors, men and machinery working in tandem, simultaneously at hundred places. You should see supervisors scurrying around with walkie-talkies, all over the place. Based on my experience, I would stay the involvement seen, here, is absolutely pathetic.
We felt as if the Contactors have lost steam. What could be the reason? Most probably payment defaults? This is quite possible, considering the fact that the Govt. has not been able to raise money by auctions and all previous collected funds, would anyway have got diverted. (Remember, even money collected as advance for Golden Mile Projects which was to be returned to Bidders is off course not available.)
If this is the way the project is going to proceed, this 20 Km will take at least 3 years to reach motorable level, let alone finish.
Combined with the already visible failure on Elevated Expressway, be ready for the grandest mess of the Century!
This is the situation near L&T Apartment Towers. A Hill is yet to be broken up. Over long lengths, even base of road has not been dug up.
Your heart melts when you see small streches of road getting finished! If at leat 50% was completed to this level, by this time!
This is a rare sight! A small length where metaling is seen. It looks out of place! May be this is the place the ORR Project Director Visits, to record Progress and pat everybody's back!
Here and there you will find a foundation, an excavator, a concrete pump. Why is the expected buzz absent?
Where is the road to the Airport buddy?!
We found that with just few months away to 2008 March, even construction team can not travel from APPA to Shamshabad!!. (This is a 10KM stretch and the workers or engineers can not move from one end, to the other. That summs up the situation!) Miles of hillocks are yet to be cut and there is no ACCESS, at all! We were able to move from Guchibowli upto APPA and then for another 2 Km, by bike, through the mud tracks used by trucks. That is all. It gets stuck there with a huge virgin hill, looking down and making a pass! We rock climbed and reached the top. What we saw was heart breaking! Unending rough terrain, yet to be touched.
Road building can never be done overnight. It's a very lengthy process. The road width has to be excavated deep and all soil removed. It has to be replaced with red earth, layer by layer. Each layer has to be rolled and cured. The surface preparation with broken granite also happens layer by layer. There is no short cut at all. Let alone flyovers, culverts, underpasses, even plane road will not be seen in several stretches, by 2008 March.
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