Vehicular movement on Meghna and Meghna-Gumti on the Dhaka-Chittagong Highway will remain suspended for four days from 6:00am Friday due to repair works of their damaged expansion joints and hinge bearings.
The government will face a huge challenge to manage movement of around 30,000 vehicles use the two bridges on the highway everyday.
The vehicles will use an alternative route. The detour for the Dhaka-Chittagong traffic is Dhaka-Bhairab-Brahmanbaria-Moinamati-Chittagong. Vehicles coming from Dhaka would be stopped at Kanchpur bridge and diverted to Narsingdi while those from Chittagong would be stopped at Moinamati and diverted toward Brahmanbaria to facilitate the repair.
Both the bridges are under threat due to damage to the hinge bearings, expansion joints and river-bed scouring.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh Railway, responding to a request of the communications ministry, has decided to introduce two pairs of special trains on Dhaka-Chittagong route with the existing seven trains to ease pressure on the road.
“We will run one pair of trains today (Friday) and another pair on Sunday,” said railway’s Di
rector General Md Abu Taher. He said off-day of two trains have been cancelled for the arrangement of special trains.
Bangladesh Army, assigned to do the repair job, would initially fix five expansions and hinge bearings of Meghna Bridge and three expansion joints and hinge bearings of Meghna-Gumti Bridge.
Source:The Daily Star
