Aabid Hussain
Srinagar: In its maiden effort in Kashmir, Roads & Buildings department constructed a bailey bridge in Mehjoor Nagar Srinagar to help decongest the narrowing roads in the uptown city. This was done quickly after the old bridge collapsed.
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Creation of Bailey bridges has hitherto remained an exclusivity of armed forces and most of the culverts they created were under Operation Sadhbavana. The Mehjoor Nagar bridge will be the first implemented by a civil government in Srinagar. Earlier, army would execute such projects, which, in certain cases were funded by the state government, officials said.
Old Mehjoor Nagar bridge was closed for heavy motor vehicles on February 6, after one of its supporting pillars got collapsed and its closure caused massive traffic jam from Jawahar Nagar to Rambagh.
“The bridge is now completed which took only 15 days and can handle 20-ton load.” sources associated with the bridge said. “On February 13, we started spade work and on February 28, we launched the bridge”
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Bailey is a type of portable, pre-fabricated, truss bridge that has been extensively used since world war-II as even vehicles can ply on it, Assistant Engineer (AE) R&B Srinagar Parveiz Hussain said. “The bridge is 190 feet long and has a carriage-way of 14 feet.”
The bridge involved using approximately 81 tons of steel. Most of the steel trusses were managed from Kolkatta based Garden Reach company.
