KARACHI: Work on the construction of the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto flyover at Shaheen Complex has been delayed for want of redesign after reservations were expressed by the traffic police to its proposed design, it emerged on Monday.

The flyover is being funded by the Sindh government while the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation is the executing agency, sources said.

Costing over Rs536 million, the six-metre-high and 478-metre-long flyover when started is planned to be completed within eight months.

The sources said that the KMC just before starting the constriction work called in the traffic police authorities to get their input on the project. The police after getting a presentation rejected the design saying that it would not solve the traffic jam issue and suggested that it be redesigned.

The sources said that it was just a coincidence that the input from the police was sought which raised real issues and sense prevailed in the KMC and it decided to delay the implementation of the project and redesign the structure rather than going ahead with a plan that on one hand would not have solved the problem and on the other hand hundreds of millions of rupees would have been wasted without easing traffic congestion.

However, no action was being taken against the KMC officials who had passed the previous design.

The sources said that earlier the KMC was planning a flyover on Dr Ziauddin Ahmed Road from the Rangers headquarters, housed in the Jinnah Courts, towards Pakistan Chowk after crossing the Shaheen Complex traffic intersection. However, the fact of the matter was that the road handled only a little percentage of the traffic volume in the area.

The old design prescribed that the traffic coming from I. I. Chundrigar Road and going towards the PIDC would have to turn left towards Arts Council and after taking a U-turn at the Arts Council would come back to the Shaheen Complex and then turn left and move towards the PIDC.

This was being done to give an easy access to traffic coming from Arts Council and going to I. I. Chundrigar Road, but it would have created a traffic mess at the U-turn site near the Arts Council.

The traffic police considered that this plan would not solve the problem fully; so it needed modifications as the police maintained that its major issue was the free flow of traffic coming from I. I. Chundrigar Road through the Shaheen Complex intersection during the evening rush hour.

The police said that while the traffic’s movement towards I. I. Chundrigar Road in the morning was distributed over around three to four hours from 8.30 to 12.30pm, owing to different offices / markets opening timings, but during the evening rush hour — as the offices / markets closed down between 5pm and 6pm — entire traffic load came to the Shaheen Complex intersection between 5.30pm and 6.30pm and usually created a nightmare for drivers as well as the traffic police and pedestrians.

The sources said that now under the revised design, currently under preparation, the flyover would be constructed on I. I. Chundrigar Road to ameliorate the evening rush hour during which bulk of the traffic leaves the central business district and is choked at the Shaheen Complex intersection with the traffic coming from the PIDC and going towards Pakistan Chowk and towards the Arts Council.

Now under the new proposed design the flyover will begin from I. I. Chundrigar Road and one of its arms would turn left at the Shaheen Complex intersection and climb down near the Arts Council. The main flyover coming from I. I. Chundrigar Road after passing Shaheen Complex would continue on Dr Ziauddin Ahmed Road and another of its arm would turn left and climb down on Aiwan Sadar Road going towards the Governor House, while the third arm of the flyover would climb down on Dr Ziauddin Ahmed Road and would cater to the traffic going towards the PIDC.

The sources said that there would be no change in the route of the traffic going towards I. I. Chundrigar Road, as the vehicles coming from the Arts Council side and the Governor House side would be passing under the flyover and turning right and would cross the Shaheen Complex intersection easily as the number of vehicles coming from the Pakistan Chowk side and going towards PIDC was considerably smaller.

The sources said that after the new design was finalised it would be sent to the Sindh government and after its approval the project would be implemented.

Responding to Dawn queries, KMC administrator Rauf Farooqui said that there had been a slight delay in the start of the construction work of the flyover as its design was being reviewed and after the new design would come in, it would be sent to the Sindh government and after its approval work on the project would start, he added.