National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has started pre-opening tests of the Butibori flyover. The steps are in run up to reopening of the bridge on National Highway no 44 for traffic movement. Load testing of the flyover will commence on Wednesday, officials said. On Tuesday, the contractor, under watchful eyes of officials, conducted temperature and heat test post completion of repair and rehabilitation of the damaged section of the flyover. About 14 pier structures were reconstructed to strengthen the carrying capacity of the fly-over.

 

Now, the crucial test is to study the load bearing capacity of rehabilitated structure and reopening decision will be done post-analysis of the results. The entire exercise is likely to be completed in a day or two and thereafter, the Butibori flyover could reopen for vehicular traffic and same would ease the movement at the crucial juncture on busy stretch of highway. Load testing is necessary to gauge the strength of recast pier caps as to their durability and weight bearing capacity. If the report comes positive on the capability of the structure to sustain weight, traffic then can move smoothly through Butibori. For the regular commuters, particularly the locals, the reopening of flyover will ease their lives that were in disarray ever since December last year. Due to the cracking of pier caps due to suspected movement of a heavy weight trailer, Butibori Square was thrown into chaos.

 

During peak time, it was nightmare as vehicles coming from all four direction would wrestle with each other to move ahead in hurry leading to traffic snarls Chandrakant Sinha, General Manager (Tech) and Project Director, NHAI, Nagpur Region Office, said that 14 pier structures were recast, when asked as to strategy adopted for rehabilitation of the damaged bridge. He said that extra reinforcements were added to ensure in future the flyover can effectively carry heavy to very heavy loads. The pier caps were constructed fresh and with extra durability, the question of repeat of any such subjugation should not arise in future. He also replied in affirmative that even heavy load can now move with ease on the Butibori fly-over thanks to additional reinforced steel bars added to the piers. As to reason for breakage, Sinha opined that there have to be multiple causes.

 

A single cause is never the case whenever such incident of cracks occurs in any concrete structure. But now, NHAI has pushed the episode behind and is looking forward to ensure smooth movement of traffic on Butibori stretch. The flyover, a four-laned structure, was constructed at a cost of Rs 70 crore. A few piers cracked on December 2024 that snapped a critical link in the connectivity on Nagpur-Wardha and Nagpur-Chandrapur route connectivity. Particularly the movement of heavy vehicle on the national highway no. 44 is in big numbers and hence the goods movement faced hurdles post closure of fly-over as NHAI assessed it for carrying out repairs. In between to avoid traffic snarls that was becoming a daily headache, Nagpur Rural Police put in place a diversion to negate any changes of criss-cross movement of vehicles. This led to a long detour for vehicles, especially those wanting to enter the Butibori MIDC. Now as part of load bearing test, 10 to 15 trucks loaded with 30 tonnes of weight each will be stationed on the repaired portion for a period of 48 hours. The readings of the weight bearing capacity of the pier structures would be studied and based on it the decision on reopening of the Butibori fly-over is expected by weekend, said local officials who are co-ordinating with NHAI team.