Cable clean-up op in Alipore, 2 north and south Kolkata corridors

Overhead cables along two major north-south alignments that stretch 34km will be cleaned up along with roads in Alipore to remove the mesh of cable lines that ruins the city’s skyline, hinder firefighting and damage civic lamp-posts when they cause them to topple during storms. Several other roads will be identified within a week where a similar exercise will be carried out to dress cable lines and clear the mess.

At a meeting convened by chief secretary HK Dwivedi at the state secretariat on Saturday and attended by Kolkata Police commissioner Soumen Mitra, Kolkata Municipal Corporation commissioner Binod Kumar and representatives of power utility CESC, telecom firms BNSL, Reliance Jio, Airtel, Vi, Alliance broadband, Wishnet, SITI Broadband and West Bengal Cable TV and Broadband Operators’ United Forum, a decision was taken to remove dead cables on Alipore Road, Judges Court Road and DL Khan Road and dress the live ones.

This is the route that chief minister Mamata Banerjee takes to commute to Nabanna from her residence. She has on multiple occasions in the past raised the issue of cables turning into an eyesore and a threat to public safety. While the primary concern was aesthetics or the lack of it earlier, two developments in the past three years have shifted focus on the safety threat. In the Bagree market fire in 2018, cables strung across the lamp-posts and hindered firemen. Then in May last year, when cyclone Amphan uprooted trees, they fell on cables that in turn led to toppling of lamp-posts.
Following the cyclone, cables along Prince Anwar Shah connector and Kasba connector were dressed and several tonnes of dead cables discarded. On Harish Mukherjee Road that the CM uses while returning from the secretary, underground pipeline has been laid to carry the cables. Work will begin on Monday or Tuesday to shift the cables underground.
Now, the two major stretches identified to streamline the cable mess. One is 24 km long and includes BT Road, Central Avenue, Chowringhee, Ashutosh Mukherjee Road, SP Mukherjee Road, Deshpran Sasmal Road and the other 10 km long and includes APC Road and AJC Bose Road.

The police commissioner has been entrusted with the task of identifying other major roads in the city where the cables need to be cleaned up. It was also decided that no new Internet cables will be permitted to use the lamp-posts and that they would have to be laid underground.

The forum of cable operators has suggested that only thin optic fiber cables of 12 core specification be allowed to be strung up on lamp posts so that if a tree falls on the cable, it will snap instead of bringing down the lamp-posts on either sides that thicker cables do. ToI