By Ashley Karen
The Nepalese government will construct a flyover and a tunnel to relieve the traffic jams at Koteshwar Chowk, which has become an everyday issue in Kathmandu’s traffic management. The predicted cost for the project is around Rs 25 billion.
Although the government revealed this project in its policies and programs for the fiscal year 2017/18, but it was not finalized technically. The project is now ready to move forward after an investigation by JICA (the Japan International Cooperation Agency) and the Japanese Cooperation Mission.
As reported, the government is trying to negotiate a loan agreement to construct a structure with a flyover tunnel (underpass) in the Jadibuti-Koteshwar-Tinkune section.
The vehicles in Koteshwar encounter long traffic jams during morning-evening peak hours. The government appointed the JICA to recommend solutions for this problem.
According to the reports, the government has selected one of the three technical options delivered by JICA in Koteshwar. The Department of Roads (DoR) has preferred the option of building an underpass in the middle section, including Koteshwar Chowk and building a flyover at Tinkune and Jadibuti.
The first two options provided by JICA were significant infrastructures to link ring roads. The first option was to build a 1.3 km flyover for Rs 9 billion on the ring road from Tinkune to Balkumari, and the second option was to construct a two-way tunnel of Rs 24 billion, 1.2 km crossing the Koteshwar Chowk.
In addition, the third option concerned a two-way tunnel construction with a flyover at a cost of about NPR 24 billion. JICA’s investigation revealed that this option would keep the ring road traffic flowing uninterrupted. Therefore, the government is scheduling to reserve a loan from JICA for this project.
JICA submitted the initial report of the study in October 2019, and accordingly, it has given the final one. As Bijayakumar Jaisi, the Head of the Development Cooperation Implementation Division of DoR, claimed, the loan agreement will be signed soon.
He also stated that a flyover will be built from Manohara Bridge to Pepsicola Chowk, and a 600-meter tunnel will also be constructed from Jadibuti to the Munibhairav temple endpoint at Tinkune. This tunnel will pass under the area housing the airport’s runway signal lights without affecting the runway itself.
The project anticipates linking the flyover at the tunnel’s entrance to the Munibhairav temple in Tinkune and expanding it to the Bagmati Bridge. This design contains building about 500-meter-long flyovers on both sides.
