Scheduled plying of goods and heavy duty vehicles authorised

Heavy duty vehicles containing tea and refrigerated vehicles will be allowed to travel in the Port area in the city round the clock, while containers and trailers will be allowed to ply from 12 noon to 4pm.

The decision was taken at a high-level meeting held on Tuesday. It was attended by state Urban Development minister and MLA from Kolkata Port contituency Firhad Hakim, chairman of Kolkata Port Trust(KoPT) and senior police officers.

Since September 24, Kolkata Police has imposed restrictions on movement of heavy vehicles on CGR Road, Hide Road, Kidderpore Road, Remount Road, Coalbath Road and Taratala Road. As a result, the estimated daily loss varies anything between Rs 100 to Rs 150 crore.

The KoPT had appealed to Kolkata Police to withdraw the restrictions as they were hitting business very badly.

The restrictions on goods vehicles had been imposed to ease traffic movement in the port area.As long container vehicles are parked on either side of the road, they regularly cause traffic snarls in the city.

To tackle the problem, the police fixed timings for the movement of trailers and heavy duty goods vehicles. Tuesday’s meeting was convened to resolve the impasse.

Meanwhile, it has been decided that KoPT will spend Rs 65 crore to repair Sonai Road, Coal Dock Road and Sonarpur Road. It will carry out patch repair on some other roads at an estimated cost of Rs 85 lakh.

The trust will also construct parking lot for trailers and heavy duty vehicles. The work will take three to four months and until the parking area is ready, the Customs Department will allow parking of heavy duty trucks and trailers in dock numbers I and II.

Currently, 120 trailers can be parked in the existing parking lot. Once the new parking zone is ready, it will accommodate around 650 goods vehicles.KoPT officials expect that from early 2017, traffic 

congestion in the Port area would be eased out once the measures that were discussed in Tuesday’s meetings are implemented.