Rehabilitation works on Apongbon Bridge on Lagos Island began on Thursday with excavation works on a path, while the second lane remained opened to traffic, the News Agency of Nigeria reports.
A NAN correspondent, who visited the site, reports that workmen were seen using both heavy duty equipment and other excavation machines to crush and dig off a portion of the highway demarcated.
NAN saw heavy deployment of Lagos State Traffic Management Authority officials controlling the traffic with policemen on ground at the construction zone.
The Federal Controller of Works in Lagos, Adamola Kuti, who was on site with his team of engineers, told NAN that the stretch was being reconstructed to address a major challenge.
Kuti explained that the entire drainage path from the highway to the lagoon, which was blocked by illegal refuse disposal, was being cleaned and the road being reconstructed with concrete.
He added that the earlier works done on the highway with same concrete materials did not hold because the construction was done during the raining season.
“We are opening up underground drainage channels which we will clean up to the lagoon to meet the ocean. The entire length is about 1.5 kilometers and it passes through communities to outer Marina into the lagoon.
“The solution we are applying here is as a result of the peculiar problem, the drains are blocked and when it rains, this place is a depression, all the water flows back to flood this place instead of flowing into the lagoon.
“This repair is very critical because of huge traffic coming from Victoria Island. We are replacing 150 meters of the road with concrete so that it will no longer spoil.
“The repair works will span up to where we have the expansion joint and we will work from today until on or before December 14,’’ he told NAN.
He said that when rigid pavement work was completed on the first lane, it would be given a period of between seven and 14 days to “cure” properly before moving to the second lane to replicate reconstruction works.
Kuti added that work was ongoing on other bridges which included Oju-Elegba, Independence, Alaka and Dorman Long where hand rails, expansion joints and approaches were being repaired and replaced.
“Very shortly, we will also begin work on the Falomo Bridge,’’ he said.
The controller said that plans were on to revisit the Iganmu area on Funsho Williams Avenue towards Ijora, usually flooded due to illegal refuse disposal to free up drains and rehabilitate the highway.
“With the attitude of our people, a lot of drains have been blocked, so, we are appealing to Lagosians to help government by disposing refuse properly,’’ he said.
He assured that with the clement weather, government was embarking on massive repair of roads on the axis and across federal highways in Lagos.
He said that contractors had also mobilised to site to begin rehabilitation works on critical sections of the Lagos-Abeokuta expressway.
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