The controversy-ridden Kalma Chowk flyover is again in the eye of the storm after Punjab’s Planning and Development Board (P&D) proposed stopping its construction and amending its design to make it in line with the Lahore Mass Transit project that is scheduled for a launch next year. A P&D official told Pakistan Today that designs of the Kalma Chowk flyover and Lahore Mass Transit Project were not in harmony with each other.
“The subway route of the Lahore Mass Transit system is intended to pass beneath the Kalma Chowk flyover and the pillars to be erected could mess up the billion dollar metro train project aimed at catering for future travel needs,” he said. “Now it is for NESPAK to amend the Kalma Chowk flyover design.” Some officials also suggested passing the Mass Transit route over the Kalma Chowk flyover. They said a final decision in this regard would be taken after the Chinese company, the contractor of Lahore Mass Transit Project, arrived in the city.
Sources said the Communication and Works (C&W) Department had ruled out such apprehensions, calling the design fit for future travel endeavours. Sources said that C&W Secretary Major (r) Azam Suleman Khan conveyed to P&D that sufficient space had already been spared inside the pillars of the flyover to let the Lahore Mass Transit project route pass through easily. Kalma Chowk flyover Project Director Col Ibrahim Dogar told Pakistan Today that a 10-meter space had already been allocated for the mass transit project, so there was no need to amend the design.
He said that the flyover costing Rs 1,528 million was not a complete solution to traffic congestion on Ferozepur Road and its adjoining arteries and was only a step towards the solution. After the flyover’s construction, he said, some chunk of traffic would be shifted towards the canal and Model Town Mor and traffic jams would not be a permanent feature. The Kalma Chowk flyover has hit quite a few snags since the announcement of the project. It faced its first impediment when the Lahore High Court (LHC) provisionally barred the Punjab government from carrying out the project on a petition by the Lahore Conservation Society and other organisations on March 24.
The court extended the stay on April 7 and directed the Punjab government to file its reply by April 11. Later, an LHC division bench gave the Punjab government the go-ahead for the flyover project, calling it a public welfare project and directed the provincial government to submit an integrated traffic plan for the city by May 24, the next hearing date. The controversy deepened further when most of the objections pointed out at a public hearing on the environmental impact assessment (EIA) report on the Kalma Chowk flyover project went unanswered by the Communications and Works (C&W) Department and the Environmental Protection Department (EPD) officials.
