Restoration of road to flyover delayed in Solan

Advertisement

Solan, December 12

The poor load-bearing capacity of the soil has delayed the work of restoring a road leading to a flyover at Samlech village on the Solan-Parwanoo section of the NH-5.

The road expansion work was completed in June 2021 by GR Infraprojects, which was assigned the job by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). The flyover was part of this project.

In August, a 50-metre stretch of the road had caved in, cutting off the approach road to the flyover. Vehicular traffic on the flyover has been put on hold since then. Traffic was diverted through a single-lane road on the highway and the Barog bypass was also used as an alternative.

The hopes that the flyover will be restored soon have been dashed as water seepage has hit the load-bearing capacity of the soil. It has become a challenge to restore the road under such circumstances.

Ram Asra Khural, Project Director, NHAI, says, “Since the load-bearing capacity of the affected portion of the road near Samlech village has been found to be very poor, finalising the design for restoring the road is taking time.”

He says, “Detailed geo-technical investigations, including soil testing of the site, were undertaken by experts. A design suggested to restore the road was not approved due to the poor load-bearing capacity of the soil. Following this, experts suggested new engineering interventions and this could delay the restoration work.”

The soil testing on the site had revealed that the soil strata was weak even up to 20 m depth. Hence deeper foundation where hard rock was available were to be undertaken. The design to re-construct the caved-in road is being prepared keeping in view this handicap to ensure that such a mishap is not repeated.

Technical reports have also confirmed that the base of the road has gradually eroded owing to water seepage from a culvert.

Once the design is finalised, another three or four months will be required to construct the approach road.

The experts are pondering over various options, including bypassing the stretch of the soil, but much will depend on the load-bearing capacity of the soil present in its vicinity.