Vidyasagar Setu will remain closed for two hours from 1am to 3am on Thursday for repairs, police said.
A notification issued by the commissioner of Kolkata police on Tuesday said the closure was “in the interest of public safety and convenience for repair and rehabilitation” of the bridge.
The ramps of the bridge, too, will remain shut during the period, the notification says.
During this two-hour closure of the country’s longest cable-stayed bridge, all vehicles headed for Vidyasagar Setu from AJC Bose Road will be diverted from Turf View towards the Hastings crossing. They will then move through St George’s Gate Road and Strand Road towards the Howrah bridge.
“The vehicles headed for Second Hooghly Bridge (Vidyasagar Setu) from Red Road will be diverted towards the Hastings crossing so they can move through St Georges Gate Road and Strand Road towards the Howrah bridge,” said an officer.
All vehicles headed for the bridge from Garden Reach and Kidderpore will be diverted from the Hastings crossing to St Georges Gate Road and Strand Road.
Since early this month, goods vehicles headed for Howrah from Kolkata have not been allowed to take Vidyasagar Setu as repairs are on for the holding down cables of the structure.
These cables lie beneath the bridge’s deck slab and 16 such cables help in maintaining the equilibrium of the structure, built with 152 cables in a fan-like arrangement on the top.
Two sets of pylons at two ends of the bridge hold the holding down cables, which aren’t visible from the top.
“One of the 16 cables will be cut and replaced with a new one. This is a specialised job and the bridge, along with the ramps, need to be free of traffic for two hours for the task,” said an official of the Hooghly River Bridge Commissioners (HRBC), which maintains the structure.
Apart from repairing the 16 holding down cables, the bearings of the bridge will be replaced along with some of the cables on the top.
The total cost of the project has been estimated at Rs 202 crore and it has been decided that goods vehicles will remain off each flank of the bridge for four months.
Senior officials said once the work of cutting and replacing one of the holding down cables was completed on Thursday, vehicular traffic would resume on the bridge except for restrictions on the movement of goods vehicles towards Howrah.
“During the next four months when we will work on the Howrah-bound flank, there will be several instances when we will require such two-hour complete closure of the bridge to replace the cable,” the HRBC official said.
