Padma Bridge rail track installation to take 6mnts

The installation of the railway track on the lower deck of the Padma Bridge will begin in the final week of July and is anticipated to be completed within six months.

On Sunday, Bangladesh Bridge Authority (BBA) will begin transferring railway track components to Bangladesh Railway (BR), allowing BR to commence the installation.

The handover process may take two or three days, and after that, the railway track installations will begin following due processes, including a joint survey, said BR sources.

BR will try their best to continue the installation work without hampering normal vehicular movement on the upper deck, an official of BR said.

Earlier, the installation work could not be done due to the complexities of working on both road and rail lines simultaneously.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina inaugurated the much-awaited bridge with the incomplete rail tracks, and vehicular movement started the next day on the upper deck of the bridge.

Padma rail link project director Afzal Hossain told The Business Post that before starting the installation work they will monitor the vibration of the bridge caused by vehicular movement and also conduct a survey to place the central line.

“Our primary finding is that the bridge vibrates a bit due to vehicular movement. We will run trials to see if the vibration causes any problems. We may ask the authorities to lower the highest permitted speed on the bridge,” he said.

He said that vehicles tend to violate the 60km/h speed limit since its inauguration. “If the authorities can ensure a maximum 60km/h speed on the upper deck, the vibration may not hamper our construction work,” he said.

Asked if they would recommend closing one lane of the bridge, he said, they were not primarily thinking of imposing this restriction.

The project director said they had a meeting with the BBA and Padma Bridge project officials at Mawa Service Area in Munshiganj on Saturday.

They informed the meeting that the work of installing seven kilometres of track on the bridge that stretches to both ends would take six months maximum to complete.

“The BBA will hand over the drawing and design of the bridge to us shortly to let us start the work,” he said.

Visiting the project site on Friday, Railways Minister Nurul Islam Sujan told reporters that the Padma Bridge rail link project is one of the government’s priority projects.

The project will be completed in three parts—from Dhaka to Mawa; from Mawa to Bhanga; and from Bhanga to Jessore.

More than 80 per cent of the work has been completed from Mawa to Bhanga, 60 per cent completed from Dhaka to Mawa, and work progress from Bhanga to Jessore was 51 per cent. The total work progress was so far 60 per cent.

Bangladesh Railway is implementing the 169 km rail link project from Dhaka to Jessore at a cost of around Tk 40,000 crore.