Metro in mind, govt mulls cloverleaf flyover near Amausi airport
LUCKNOW: The construction of a multi-crore cloverleaf flyover is expected to solve the traffic snarls near the Chaudhary Charan Singh Airport intersection on Kanpur Road. Airport Authority of India (AAI), civic and administration officials would meet here on Friday to discuss the preliminaries of the project to integrate it with the construction of the proposed Lucknow Metro Rail depot in the vicinity.
The sprawling 32nd battalion PAC land in the region has been chosen by the state government for setting up the depot for metro rail. Since the depot would be located at a stone’s throw from the airport, AAI officials are concerned over the free flow of traffic on the highway. “Initially, the proposal was to build an underpass at the airport intersection but now experts have suggested construction of a cloverleaf flyover instead near the airport junction,” said an official.
It may be recalled that union civil aviation secretary NK Srivatava had met chief secretary Jawed Usmani to resolve issues holding back expansion and strengthening of infrastruc- ture facilities at various airports in Uttar Pradesh on July 26. The flyover project as also the extension of Amausi Airport’s runway, which has now been hanging fire for several years too was taken up in the meeting. “The chief secretary had said that he would take a final decision on the flyover, its fund- ing and construction agency after discussing it with national highway and other authorities,” said the official.
The state government, he said, has not been able to resolve the issue of providing 174 acres land needed for the expansion of the runway. “A large number of encroachments including a private township by a prominent real estate developer is posing a major problem for us as it is coming up on the land earmarked for expansion,” said an aviation department official.
Though Amausi has been given an international airport tag, large aircrafts like Jumbo still cannot land here because of the size of its airstrip. “Our existing 2.75 kilometre long runway has to be extended up to 3.50 kilometre before we can handle jumbo aircrafts,” said another official. Anita Singh, secretary to chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, has been asked to coordinate and hold meeting with various state authorities to expedite work on issues that were mutually agreed upon at Wednesday meeting.