The giant four-lane cable stayed Railway Over Bridge at Burdwan Junction, considered to be the second largest in the country is set to be opened for public vehicles on the day of Mahalaya this year. Senior district administration officials, along with the senior Railway technical experts inspected the RoB.

The work on 188.43 metre cable-stayed RoB was kicked off in 2012. Besides having 1.5 metre-wide footpaths on each of the sides parallel to the lanes, the RoB has 27.7 metres of width to accommodate vehicles on four lanes.

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The Railway Vikas Nigam Limited was assigned to construct the Rs 288 crore RoB on turn-key basis that was scheduled to be completed by December 2018 after the last work assessment report was prepared in June 2018.

The implementation of the RoB progressed over eight years in Burdwan Junction of the Eastern Railway ~ one of the country’s future fast track models passing over the busy Railway yards accommodating 10 railway tracks.

The RoB, apart from social resistance, had to overcome certain technical constraints too like restriction of maximum height of the road surface clearances and also busy movement of rolling stocks over the yard, one RVNL official said. After the vintage RoB built brick by brick in the British era on the Burdwan–Katwa road was declared endangered, the cry for a modern RoB intensified and the Railway authority, in 1996 conceived a plan to build a state-of-the-art RoB. The idea, however, was shelved as the state didn’t take the initiative.

But the plan got firmed up in 2007 as the state agreed to acquisition of land for the purpose of laying approach roads to the four-lane hanging bridge.

The Centre finally gave a go ahead in 2010 and the work began in 2012. The district magistrate, Burdwan (East), Mr Vijay Bharti attended a meeting with the RVNL and Eastern Railway officials on the RoB itself to help expedite the construction work.

Mr Bharti later said: “The works are on on war footing and the officials have assured me that it will see completion within a few months and we are hopeful of opening the RoB on the day of Mahalaya for vehicular traffic movement.” The RoB connects Burdwan town with the two Sub Divisions of Kalna and Katwa.