Islamabad: Zero Point Interchange: Work slightly ahead of schedule

[Naveed Yaseen]

Mobarik A. Virk
The contractors engaged for the construction of the Zero Point Interchange as well as the Capital Development Authority (CDA) claim that so far the pace of work on the project is being kept according to schedule, in fact slightly ahead of schedule, despite a number of setbacks and hiccups confronted since the project started.

The Project Director, Mumtaz Hussain, told ‘The News’ that 85 per cent of work on structures in ‘Stage-I’ has been completed already while in terms of overall project progress, 47 per cent of work has been completed despite a number of stoppages and halts in work that the project faced right from the start.

This project was launched in September 2008 with a completion time of 24 months at a total cost of Rs2.34 billion. The Project Director told ‘The News’ that they are expecting it to be completed ahead of the schedule date of completion of September 2010.

The project includes four loops, four slip roads in addition to widening of the 1.6 km stretches in all directions on the Kashmir Highway and the Islamabad Highway from the existing Zero Point bridge.

“Right now our two links, one from the Islamabad High to Kashmir Highway leading towards M-2 (Motorway) and the other from the Kashmir Highway to the Islamabad Highway leading towards Faisal Mosque are ready for carpeting. But we are unable to carry out the work because Wapda is yet to start work on re-location of the overhead high tension power lines,” the Mumtaz Hussain told ‘The News’.

“We have already paid the first instalment of Rs40 million to Wapda out of the total of Rs90 million for shifting of these overhead power lines. But the Wapda people have not stirred so far, thus causing a hold-up in work on these two links at present. As soon as they will shift these power lines these two links will be made operative and will ease the pressure of traffic flow,” the project director said.

The other problem, he added, has been the law and order situation, which causes a halt in work from time to time whenever there is a terror strike or a security red alert is announced by the city administration. “The latest example was the three-day interruption of supplies when the city administration banned entry of all trucks and dumpers in the city from June 1 to June 3, 2009. Now all the sand and crush stone is coming from Lawrencepur and Sangjani and because of this ban on entry of trucks and dumpers in the federal capital for these three days our work on the project also suffered as we could not get the required construction material,” Mumtaz Hussain told ‘The News’.

In addition to such bans on entry of trucks and dumpers the work on project site also get affected whenever there is a movement of the VVIPs. “Each time such a step is taken we are compelled to stop all kind of work on the site for at least from two to three hours and at times even more, putting more pressure on us,” he added.

Besides this, he said, the work gets very slow during the morning and afternoon rush hours when people are heading to their work places or returning home at the end of the day because we do not demobilise all the heavy machinery during these hours to avoid any unfortunate incident and facilitate the smooth flow of traffic.

“Delayed rains this year have also caused some problems for us. We continued to receive rains during May and even in the month of June. These months are considered to be ‘dry’ but this year there were quite a few rains during this period. These rains also prevented use of heavy machinery and dampened the pace of work,” he pointed out.

“However,” he added, “despite all these hurdles and hiccups we have managed to keep the pace of work on the project ahead of schedule slightly. Had we not faced these problems we would have been way ahead of the schedule.”

He pointed out that the commuters presently passing through the Islamabad Highway would face some problems after two months (August, 2009) when one side of the Islamabad Highway would be closed for expansion and linking with the loops.

It is believed that the CDA would switch the traffic flow to the ‘Garden Avenue’ at that stage. However, it would be appropriate if the concerned people in the authority may start rehabilitation as well as expansion of the ‘Garden Avenue’, which is a winding two-way narrow road snaking through the Islamabad Park area behind Shakarparian hillock, linking Kashmir Highway/7th Avenue with the Islamabad Highway.

If the CDA may do some good patchwork at a few spots and widen the road by at least employing the ‘Triple Surface Treatment’ (TST) technique on the two-meter shoulders of the Garden Avenue on both sides, it would provide a great relief during that period when the traffic load is expected to be shifted on this link.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=182473