Islamabad: The ‘Khanna Interchange’ on the Islamabad Expressway is almost complete and set to be thrown open for traffic flow in all directions by middle of the next month (December 2018), sources in the Capital Development Authority (CDA) told ‘The News’.
The completion of the Khana pull inter-change will mark the completion of the first phase of the project under which the Islamabad Highway was to be turned into a ‘Five-lane-a-side, Signal Free Corridor’ starting from T-Chowk on the G.T. Road up to the Faisal Chowk on Khayaban-e-Iqbal (old Margalla Road).
From Faisal Chowk up to Gulberg Green the five-lane road already existed and the CDA had to construct three interchanges, at Sohan, the Khanna pull and the Koral Chowk to turn it into signal free corridor in the first phase, which is now almost complete.
As far as the traffic signals are concerned, there is only one left on the Islamabad Highway near ‘Khokhar Hotel’ but it is the narrow two-lane bridges and the two-lane, deeply rutted and pits and potholes-strewn road beyond Korang nullah that is posing all type of problems in smooth flow of traffic, be that coming towards or heading out of Islamabad.
It is hoped that the CDA will soon start work on the widening of the narrow, two-lane bridges on Korang nullah and the railway over-head bridge a couple of kilometers ahead towards Rawat. The Korang nullah and the railway overhead bridge and a couple of others, which have become bottlenecks where traffic gets clogged, especially while exiting from Islamabad towards G.T. Road.
According to the CDA plan, the Islamabad Highway was to be turned into a five-lane signal free corridor by the end of 2018. However, more attention was paid on the construction of the three interchanges instead of thinking ahead and launching work on the expansion of the narrow bridges and widening of the road beyond Gulberg Green.
As a result the traffic flow is somewhat smooth and uninterrupted up and down from Gulberg Green but beyond that it is a mess. Especially with the heavily overloaded trucks moving at snail’s pace, obstructing the flow of traffic!
And it becomes almost a nightmare to travel when these trucks start overtaking yet another even more heavily overloaded truck, which they do quite often. And while the two trucks completely block the whole width of the road, the traffic keeps piling up behind.
When contacted, Syed Safdar Ali Shah, the Director Public Relation (DPR) of the CDA said that the first phase, which included construction of three inter-changes on the Islamabad Expressway was executed to do away with three traffic signals at Karal Chowk, the Khanna Pull and the Sohan stop to turn this segment ‘Signal Free’.
“Work on the second phase from Korang nullah bridge up to T-Chowk on the G.T. Road, will be started as soon as the Federal Government will release the funds for this project allocated under the PSDP (Public Sector Development Programme).
“The second phase include widening of the existing two-lane a side road into five-lane a side, widen the existing two-lane bridges and construction of more inter-changes at suggested locations, ,” the CDA Spokesman said.
“The Federal Government has allocated Rs7 billion for this project but that is yet not released to the CDA. We, on our side are fully prepared and ready for execution of the second phase of this project and only waiting for the nod from the government to go ahead,” the CDA spokesman said.