The long-overdue Kochi Bypass project has got a fillip, with the Centre sanctioning a 50-km-long, eight-lane-wide greenfield corridor linking Aroor on NH 66 with Angamaly on NH 544.

This would enable inter-district and other vehicles to avoid the congested and accident-prone Aroor-Edapally NH 66 Bypass, the Edapally-Angamaly NH 544 stretch, and the more than a dozen bottlenecked junctions along the route, saving considerable time and fuel.

The Kochi Bypass had been mooted a decade ago as a 44-km-long, six-lane-wide corridor linking Nettoor on the NH 66 Bypass with Karayamparambu, located north of Angamaly. The project remained mired in uncertainty following the expiry of its 3A notification in 2024.

“A fresh 3A notification for the proposed eight-lane-wide NH project would be issued shortly. The Centre has permitted the acquisition of land at a width of 70 metres (as compared to the earlier 45-metre-wide NH proposal). This would enable hewing out an eight-lane-wide stretch, which could further be widened to ten lanes in the project’s second phase,” said Benny Behanan, MP, while attributing the delay in kicking off the project’s construction to the slow pace of land acquisition during the term of the LDF government.

This further resulted in the traffic survey report conducted five years ago for the six-lane Kochi Bypass project becoming outdated. This necessitated a fresh traffic survey, which cited the need for an eight-lane corridor, considering the massive increase in inter-State, inter-district, and intra-district vehicular traffic, added Mr. Behanan, who had raised the demand for the project multiple times in the Lok Sabha.

While stating that the proposed Kochi Bypass would be eight lanes wide, NHAI sources said that further details of the project are awaited.

The decision to extend the alignment from Nettoor to Aroor has, in turn, raised questions about the trumpet-shaped flyover that the NHAI had mulled at Nettoor. A smaller version of the butterfly-shaped cloverleaf flyover, the trumpet flyover was to cater to traffic pouring into Nettoor from the NH Bypass, the Kochi Bypass, and the Kochi Port Connectivity NH.