With the completion deadline fast approaching, the State Public Works Department’s Rs 3 crore project to construct two foot overbridges (FoBs) on city’s busy Inner Ring Road has failed to move beyond paperwork. Nearly 10 months after the work order was issued, not a single foundation has been laid, exposing another major delay in one of the city’s key road safety projects. The two FoBs, announced in July 2025, were to be completed within 12 months, including the monsoon period.

 

Instead, commuters continue to find empty sites where the structures were supposed to come up, while pedestrians, particularly school children, are left to negotiate one of the city’s fastest and busiest roads. The bridges have been proposed near Pallotti School on Gorewada Road and Martin Nagar near Jaripatka, two locations identified because of heavy pedestrian movement and growing risk of accidents. Hundreds of school children, residents and office-goers cross these stretches every day amid speeding traffic.

 

Ironically, the delay comes even as the Inner Ring Road has become one of the busiest corridors in the city following the completion of several flyovers. While authorities have invested heavily in improving traffic flow for vehicles, the safety infrastructure meant for pedestrians remains missing. Officials of the Public Works Department (World Bank Project Division) admitted that the project has fallen substantially behind schedule and confirmed that a show-cause notice has been issued to the contractor for failing to commence work. According to officials, the contractor has begun fabricating the steel superstructures, which will be transported and erected once site work begins. The sources attributed much of the delay to the time taken in obtaining permissions from the Nagpur Improvement Trust (NIT), since both proposed sites fall within its jurisdiction.

 

Those permissions have now been obtained, they said, removing the last administrative hurdle. The FoBs are planned as covered steel structures equipped with staircases, offering safe year-round access for pedestrians, particularly schoolchildren, senior citizens and persons with disabilities. The project is part of the larger upgrade of the Inner Ring Road, notified as State Highway-340, into a four, six and eight-lane divided corridor under the World Bank-funded PWD division. While road widening has progressed across several stretches, absence of pedestrian infrastructure has created a glaring imbalance between mobility and safety. With permissions finally in place and fabrication reportedly underway, the focus has now shifted to whether the contractor can recover nearly a year’s lost time—or whether another public infrastructure promise will miss its deadline.