Chalai & Manaveeyam chosen for smart road project in pilot phase

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Smart road project, as part of the Smart city scheme, will be first implemented at Chalai and Manaveeyam.
Smart city Thiruvananthapuram limited (SCTL) recently held a meeting with road owners and utility providers to reach consensus on the arrangement of water lines, sewer lines, storm water drains, electric lines (HT and LT) and optical fibre cables (OFC). The plan is to convert all roads under area-based development (ABD) into smart roads.SCTL has identified 72.5km roads covering nine wards in ABD area.
The project is being implemented at an estimated cost of Rs 10 crore per km of which Rs 2.5 crore per km will be used for utility ducts. Initially, it was proposed to cover 64km under the project, which was later revised to 72 km. More than half of the total project estimate of the Smart City scheme is devoted to roads. The officials said that in roads with width less than 10m, cost per km would not be Rs 10 crore. With regard to corporation roads having a width of less than 5m, covering around 28 kms, cost requirement will be less. Seven components will be executed under smart roads and utility ducting at a total cost of Rs 632.96 crore.
“We have chosen Manaveeyam and Chalai for the pilot phase. All technical difficulties we might encounter during utility ducting will be cleared after the pilot phase. We hope to invite tenders by February end,” an official said.
PWD owns the longest portion with 28.9km followed by city corporation and Thiruvananthapuram road development company limited (TRDCL), which own roads measuring 28.4km and 15.3km respectively. The road owners had pointed out that certain projects funded by World Bank and Asian Development Bank had been readied for certain stretches identified under smart road project. For instance during the meeting PWD informed that the department had a proposal for Vellayamabalam-Thycaud Road funded by World Bank to which SCTL responded that a convergence could be worked out and underground ducting can be executed in the road before the commencement of PWD works. PWD has already agreed to the proposal for resurfacing and construction of storm water drains in Chalai Market Road.
While the officials are looking forward to a smooth implementation of works at Manaveeyam Road, things are likely to get complex at Chalai. KSEB has raised the demand for continuous linear ducting at Chalai, however project management consultancy has cited the difficulties in providing continuous ducting due to other service connections.
A major challenge would be sewers, lines for water supply and storm water drainage. With KWA having no mapping on existing assets, SCTL has been told that a 60cm space shall be left on either side during ducting for laying water pipelines. KWA had also raised concerns regarding physical intersection of proposed utility ducting with existing sewer and water service connection lines. Project management consultancy officials said that in the proposed section at Chalai, only manholes have been proposed and that it wouldn’t disturb the existing lines.