Airport-Moghbazar to open by December 2020: Quader
A part of the Dhaka Elevated Expressway -- stretching from from Airport to Moghbazar -- will be opened by December 2020 after the second phase of public-private partnership project (PPP) is completed, said Road Transport and Bridges Minister Obaidul Quader yesterday.
He said construction work of its first phase -- Airport to Banani Rail Crossing -- will be completed by January next year, while the second phase, from Banani Rail Crossing to Moghbazar, will be finished by December 2020.
The entire work of the project would be completed within March 2022, Quader said while visiting the construction site of the project at Kaola. The original deadline for the project was 2020.
After over seven years of toiling exercises of preparatory work, construction of the much-talked about 47km Dhaka Elevated Expressway with 19.73km main line commenced formally on April 1, 2018.
The bridge authorities signed a deal with Italian-Thai Development Public Company in January 2011 to build the expressway stretching from Shahjalal International Airport to Kutubkhali on the Dhaka-Chattogram highway, under public-private-partnership at a cost of Tk 8,703 crore.
The deal was revised and signed again in December 2013, with the cost revised at Tk 8,940 crore and incorporating alteration to a four-kilometre alignment in the southern end of the project to avoid land acquisition.
The government is to spend Tk 4,885 crore on land acquisition, resettlement and relocation of utility service lines. Therefore, the total cost of the project would come up to Tk 13,825 crore. The main objective of the project is to bypass Dhaka vertically in the fastest possible way, which would significantly reduce the traffic load inside the capital. About the delay, Quader, also general secretary of ruling Awami League, said the project remained stuck for a long time due to lack of funding. However, work of the expressway is now visible, much like the metro rail and Padma Bridge, he added.
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