More elevated roads, 9km long flyover on Ring Road in new plan to unclog Delhi

A nine-kilometre-long contiguous flyover on Ring Road is among three proposals put forward by the Public Works Department (PWD) to decongest one of the most important road stretches in the national capital. The proposals are part of a contingency plan being chalked out to handle an additional load of vehicles on Ring Road in view of eight general pool residential accommodation (GPRA) colonies planned along the road.

Besides creating an elevated road, linking six flyovers between Moti Bagh and Lajpat Nagar in a 9-kilometre stretch on Ring Road, the PWD has also proposes to build an elevated corridor from INA to Mahipalpur bypass through Africa Avenue Road or expediting the phase four expansion of the Barapullah road.

Traffic experts say the GPRA neighbourhoods will cause an unprecedented rise in traffic load on an already exhausted Ring Road. PWD officials said all these options are at “proposal level” only and the feasibility of these options is being studied. Once the feasibility studies are done, the proposals will be put before a core committee, which is overseeing the plan, for finalisation of any of these possible solutions and observation.

The Union government is engaged in a massive residential redevelopment plan around Ring Road. As per the plan, eight areas are being developed as GPRA — East Kidwai Nagar, Sarojini Nagar, Netaji Nagar, Nauroji Nagar, Kasturba Nagar, Thyagaraja Nagar, Srinivaspuri and Mohammadpur.

Sewa Ram, professor at School of Planning and Architecture, said elevation of Ring Road will augment the capacity of the arterial stretch but the authorities will have to intelligently plan the points where the elevated road would merge with the traffic at grade.

“Elevation of Ring Road will give preference to the long distance traffic and separate it from the local traffic, easing vehicular movement. This is feasible and being done world over to reduce congestion. Flow gradient should be designed in a way that the traffic merges smoothly,” said Ram, who has extensively worked on Ring Road decongestion plans.

He said at merging points six-lane traffic (3-lane elevated and 3-lane at grade) should not be just reduced to three lanes as it will lead to a bottleneck. “Don’t allow merging at the same place, instead let the traffic flow for some distance, after merging, in as many lanes before reducing the number of lanes,” he suggested.

He also said the corridor from near INA to the airport via Africa Avenue and Mahipalpur bypass can serve as a bypass for Jaipur, Gurugram and airport bound traffic from east Delhi.

Ram added that both the options — flyovers and elevated road can be implemented simultaneously.

The Barapullah phase 4 is stuck over land acquisition issues.