7 months ago
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A tragic mishap successful which 2 youths were killed arsenic their car crashed into a Kochi metro pillar adjacent Edappally connected Saturday (November 8, 2025) has renewed concerns implicit mishap risks connected roads moving on the metro corridor.
While determination has been nary grounds to nexus the mishap with the metro infrastructure, repeated incidents person erstwhile again drawn attraction to the uneven aboveground of engaged roads successful the metropolis moving on the metro corridor.
Stretches of cardinal roads, including Sahodaran Ayyappan Road, M.G. Road, and Banerjee Road, are uneven, with their surfaces adjacent the metro heap caps sinking. The quality successful tallness astir the heap caps, caused by the gradual colony of the roads, has made them accident-prone, posing superior risks to two-wheeler riders successful particular. While levelling the uneven surfaces remains a indispensable information measure, neither Kochi Metro Rail Limited (KMRL) nor the Kochi Corporation has taken immoderate factual steps to code the contented beyond exchanging a fewer communications.
The contented had drawn the attraction of the authorities past twelvemonth aft a agelong of Sahodaran Ayyappan Road adjacent Elamkulam Junction turned into a information zone, with predominant accidents claiming respective lives. In March 2024, KMRL had milled the raised portions supra the heap caps betwixt pillars 814 and 834, offering lone a partial solution to the problem. Although the Corporation had requested KMRL to transportation retired levelling works connected different stretches wrong its limits to forestall further information risks, the metro authorities person turned down the request, saying periodic attraction of the roads was not its responsibility.
Citing the lawsuit of Sahodaran Ayyappan Road, KMRL had responded to the Corporation’s petition by stating that the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), which constructed the archetypal signifier of the Kochi Metro, had reconstructed the roadworthy and handed it implicit to the Kochi Corporation successful May 2020. The metro bureau pointed retired that the defect liability play for the reconstruction had ended by May 2021. The KMRL connection clarified that the levelling works connected the Elamkulam agelong were carried retired purely arsenic an enactment of goodwill and societal commitment, and that it could not beryllium expected to undertake akin works connected the remaining stretches.
KMRL, according to sources, reasoned that the full Sahodaran Ayyappan Road had been undergoing azygous colony adjacent earlier, seemingly owed to the quality of the land. This became evident aft the aboveground implicit the heap caps remained intact, they said. “KMRL hands implicit roads to the authorities acrophobic aft reconstructing them arsenic portion of gathering metro corridors. It cannot undertake the regular attraction of roads,” a KMRL root said.
Mayor M. Anilkumar, meanwhile, said the uneven aboveground had resulted from the metro works. “Someone has to rectify the issue. Now, with the section assemblage elections circular the corner, the Corporation cannot instrumentality up immoderate work. It volition person to beryllium handled by the adjacent Corporation council,” helium added.
