Additional Railway over Bridge at Indrali to be commissioned on Sept. 22, says MP

Udupi-Chikkamagaluru Member of Parliament Kota Srinivas Poojary on Friday said the additional Railway Over Bridge (RoB) on Malpe-Tirthahalli National Highways (NH) 169A atop Mangaluru-Mumbai Railway line at Indrali in Udupi will be opened for traffic on September 22.

The commissioning thus brings to an end over seven years of misery of road users who had been enduring traffic snarls, accidents, dust, and slush, among others, from 2018 when the additional bow-string steel RoB work commenced. The National Highways Division of Karnataka Public Works Department, which has been widening NH 169A into four lane had completed the erection of the bridge on May 13 this year.

Mr. Poojary was speaking to reporters after visiting the Indrali RoB site along with Udupi MLA Yashpal Suvarna, Deputy Commissioner T.K. Swaroopa, Superintendent of Police Hariram Shankar, NH-PWD Assistant Executive Engineer Manjunath Naik and others.

The MP said that though steel bridge erection was completed on May 13, concreting the bridge surface got delayed owing to the early arrival of the monsoon. Concreting the surface began on August 3, and the bridge was expected to be ready for commissioning within a week. Mr. Suvarna said that the commissioning takes place on the auspicious occasion of the beginning of Navaratri.

Kela Parkala Road

The road improvement work at Kela Parkala, between Manipal and Parkala on NH 169A, would commence from September 15, the MP said. The deteriorated stretch of the highway in a low-lying area had been testing the patience of road users for the past many years. The MP had got special grants sanctioned for its repair, and the repair work was expected to get completed within a week.

Part of NH widening

Work on the additional RoB that commenced in 2018 during the four-laning part of NH 169A between Udupi and Manipal moved at a snail’s pace due to change in design, bureaucratic delays and other issues. As vehicles had to change lanes from four-lane road to two-lane on the existing RoB, many accidents were reported on the stretch. This had prompted the district administration to launch criminal action against the department and the contractor.

The then MP Shobha Karandlaje and incumbent Mr. Poojary visited the site several times to follow up with officials to speed up the project. The total cost of the RoB was pegged at ₹9 crore when it was launched.