(This story originally appeared in on Jan 03, 2018)

NEW DELHI: While Delhi government’s PWD has already started repair work at Lajpat Nagar flyover, the department has decided to inspect other flyovers in the city, especially those constructed in 90s and early 2000.For this, PWD plans to rope in either CSIR - Central Road Research Institute or Central Building Research Institute, Roorkee. There are 86 flyovers on PWD roads, of which 11 were constructed in the 80s and 90s, while 13 were constructed in 2001 and ’02.“Initially, we will take up eight-nine flyovers, which are very old. We are in the process of floating tenders for this. Based on the report submitted by the agency, we will carry out the repair work. The expansion joints have a life of 15 - 20 years,” said an official.Officials added that one of the major hurdles in carrying out repair work is getting permission from Delhi Traffic Police. Shahdara flyover is a case in point. PWD started the repair work of Shahdara flyover sixmonths back. While 40% work has been completed, PWD is awaiting Traffic Police’s permission to complete the remaining work. Officials say that they have been pursuing the matter with Delhi Traffic Police for the past two months, but are yet to get the permission.Constructed in 1999, the 2.3km-long flyover is in urgent need of repair. Like Lajpat Nagar flyover, all expansion joints have to be changed at Shahdara flyover.Though the situation at Shahdara flyover is not as bad as Lajpat Nagar, officials say that repair should be carried out at the earliest to avert any untoward incident. “We have to change 150 expansion joints on the remaining portion. For this, we have to close carriageways. We had submitted the revised proposal two months back, but are yet to get the permission from Traffic Police,” the official added.Sources say it will take 2-3 months to change the expansion joints on one carriageway.“We will have to lift the sections between two expansion joints by putting support underneath. The traffic has to be diverted. We had prepared the plan and also did a trial run,” said an official.Traffic officials say that they have requested PWD to look for an alternate route to divert the traffic during the repair work before the permission to shut down the flyover is granted.