Next: Its Banerjee Road Widening

KOCHI: The next phase of the Metro Rail-related works will begin next week with the district administration planning to convene a meeting with the authorities concerned regarding the widening of Banerjee Road.This will be the third Metro Rail related project to be kickstarted this year. “The project mainly aims at widening the  Banerjee Road from Ernakulam North to Madhava Pharmacy Junction. There is no need for a  largescale land acquisition to widen the Banerjee Road and we have already reached a  consensus with the vendors along the stretch in this regard,” Ernakulam District Collector P I Sheik Pareeth said here on Tuesday.While speaking on the sidelines of a press conference held here, he said that the marking jobs had already been done. “Additional roofing in front of some shops will be removed,” Pareeth said. Regarding the widening of MG Road, another Metro Rail-related project, the Collector said the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) was directly implementing the project. “The stretch between Madhava Pharmacy Junction and Jose Junction will be widened by the DMRC. The initial assessment is that the business establishment will only lose a maximum of 2 metres,” he said.The work of other two Metro-related works - the reconstruction of North Rail Overbridge (RoB) and the construction of a new RoB near the KSRTC Bus Station - are progressing. “The traffic diversion introduced in connection with the demolition of the North RoB was so far very effective. Once the repair works of the major roads through which the traffic is being diverted get over, we will be able to implement the system more smoothly,” he said.