With the completion of first phase of road blacktop work, the Narayangadh-Muglin road section has opened round-the-clock from Wednesday. Workers completed the first phase of blacktopping along the 33.2-km road section on Tuesday.

The passengers will now be spared hours of long traffic jams and dust they suffered for three years. The road section remained closed for six hours from 10am to 4pm every day  since January for the road expansion and blacktopping works.

“The road stretch is now open to traffic for 24 hours as the first phase of blacktopping has been completed,” said Engineer Shiva Khanal, the information officer at the Narayangadh-Muglin Road Project. A vehicle can pass through the road section in 35 minutes if there are no   other obstacles, claimed Khanal.

The Narayangadh-Muglin section, a major road linking Kathmandu with other parts of the country, carries the heaviest traffic in the country, accounting for 90 percent of Nepal’s total international trade traffic. Around 20,000 vehicles ply the road section daily.

The road project, which is being carried out with Rs3 billion aid from the World Bank, will upgrade and expand the 33.2-km section of the road section to the Asian Highway standards and address road safety, axle-load control and environmental sustainability issues along the trade corridor.

The road will be expanded to a double-lane road with a width of 9-11 metres. The current width of the road is 5.5 metres. The road will be widened up to 11 metres from Aaptari to Jugedi, and up to 9 metres till Muglin.

According to project officials, around 92 percent of work along the 33.2-km section has been completed. Engineer Khanal said that road should be blacktopped in three phases for road surface marking. As per the agreement, the pitch should be 16cm thick, 6-6 cm during the first and second phase of blacktopping and 4 cm in the third phase.

Khanal estimated that it would take around 20 more days to complete all three phases of the blacktopping work. “The construction of around 3,100-metre-long road barriers and maintenance of 14 bridges along the section has yet to be completed,” he added.

The road project has been divided into three sections. Different construction companies have worked on each section since 2015. The deadline was extended four times to complete the road expansion work. The latest contract extension ended on May 30.