ICTT-Edappally overbridge ready

The civil work on the railway line connecting the International Container Transshipment Terminal (ICTT) at Vallarapadam near here with Edappally, the nearest railway station, was completed on Friday.

The last span of the overbridge was fixed near the railway gate at Vaduthala as part of this. The rail connectivity will be ready for traffic by December this year.

The bridge, connecting ICTT with Edapplly, is the longest railway bridge in the country. Meant for only container traffic to and from ICTT, the bridge is 4.62 km long. The total length of the railway line between ICTT and Edappally is 8.86 km.

The work on the bridge began in October 2007. About 80 per cent of the bridge has been built above the back waters of Kochi.

It has been constructed over pile foundations at 133 locations. The height of the bridge is about 7.5 mt above the ground level after the entry and the exit points and this allows water channel movement and road crossings at Mulavukad and Chittoor beneath it.

The bridge and the railway line were built by Rail Vikas Nigam Limited, a subsidiary of Indian Railways, at a cost of about Rs 300 crore, and are part of the proposed Rs 2,118-crore ICTT project, billed as the country's first global hub terminal. The ICCT is being developed by Dubai Port World on a build, operate, transfer basis for the Cochin Port Trust.

Meanwhile, work on ICTT is progressing according to schedule and the terminal will be commissioned in March, 2010. However, inrodinate delay in the road work, which is unlikely to be complete by March, 2010, may delay the commissioning of the terminal, originally scheduled for November this year.