Panaji's traffic chaos may ease only after Feb 7

PANAJI

With closure of multiple stretches of two major thoroughfare city roads -- MG Road and 18th June Road -- disrupting traffic and causing unprecedented congestion on alternate roads including the city circumventing DB Marg, residents and commuters alike may have to bear the brunt of the traffic chaos for at least three weeks as the shut stretches are expected to be partially re-opened only after February 7.

Some stretches however will also be partially reopened on February 2, but four-wheeler traffic may hardly benefit from such partial opening of the roads.

Motorists meanwhile have been facing the brunt navigating through bumper-to-bumper traffic through the day, particularly along the DB Marg where multiple feeder roads from the city intersect at the Mandovi hotel, Menezes Braganza garden, 2STC headquarters, Panaji market, Inox and further at the Kala Academy..

The road closures are necessary for work to build utility ducts, storm water drains and also sewage connections as part of the 'Smart City projects'.

Meanwhile, contractors have begun work on the last 200-metre stretch of the new sewage system from the Tadmar temple to the Sewage Treatment Plant at Tonca.

Since it is the tail end of the entire city's sewerage system, the pipes being laid are bigger and this stretch according to the IPSCDL is challenging as excavations have to go up to 10 metres deep encountering a very high water table and frequently collapsing sandy soil.

Nonetheless, IPSCDL managing director and CEO, Sanjit Rodrigues, IAS, has asserted that all the Smart City related work will be completed before the deadline of March 31.

Rodrigues has said that repeated digging of roads is necessary as interconnection between old and new sewerage chambers can be done when levels are low. 

The roads were only patched up and not entirely finished so as to prevent dust pollution with traffic movement over them, he added, seemingly explaining the repeated excavation of the same patches of roads over and over again.